T-TRIID Final Report – Hubz Project

The Hubz project is a courier network that connects small and medium size enterprises in rural communities to the world of national and international logistics. The network provides a regular transport service to rural vendors that enables them to move their products to strategic hubs for onward transport to national, regional and eventually international markets. The team, led by Intrepid Minds, has developed, a system that has secure links between the different service providers, coupled with affordable, sustainable and dependable technology in use around the world in logistics, port and airport operations.

In developing Hubz, Intrepid Minds, has responded to the greater than expected aspirations of community leaders and the drive of the individuals within South Africa. Community aspirations sparked conversations on selling curios, raw materials and on ways to improve marketing, sales, revenue generation and sustainable growth. Conversations expanded to cover national and wider distribution of community products. This stakeholder dialogue has been invaluable in the design of Hubz.

In designing Hubz, Intrepid Minds, has used the best of common logistic/digital web-based software platforms and introduced new features from other sectors (e.g. logistics, defence, critical national infrastructure, transport) in the user interfaces. These interfaces set up contracts between vendor and courier, track the process from collection to delivery and enable swift payment. The system has in-built security and anti-tamper tags. The design ethos is to make the technology as simple as possible, which means the user interface will be simple, clean, instinctive and intuitive, making Hubz attractive to individual curio artisans as well as global logistics companies.

Intrepid Minds has pledged over £150,000 in the next year including the project’s team ongoing work on enhancing the system technology. Building on the project’s success Intrepid Minds will submit a proposal to DFID for funding a second phase of Hubz’s development. In addition, Intrepid Minds, will seek financing from other sources for the wider commercialisation of Hubz.