Start-up delivers for gig drivers

In the midst of a global pandemic, Eric Fan tinkered with a product design that he hoped would revolutionize advertising.

The idea came to him while he was studying for a master’s degree at Stanford University in 2019, where he noticed the large number of students on campus.

“I just thought, what would be a cool way to encourage some of these students to spend their free time supporting local businesses?” said Fan.

When the pandemic struck and demand for meal delivery services like Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and DoorDash soared as restaurants became takeout-only, the concept became clear to fans.

his idea? A digital food delivery bag that promotes businesses and gives drivers a little extra money on top of what they earn for the delivery bigwigs.

“When COVID-19 hit and the long lockdowns, it forced us to think, how do we translate this idea into an infrastructure that was obviously booming at the time? Everyone is looking for that convenience,” Fan said.

Fan put together a small team of tech experts who worked on the idea alongside their day-to-day work. And after much online catching up and after hours Lumos was launched.

“Data has always been my bread and butter. Everyone else I brought on board had pretty similar backgrounds in tech, oriented towards data implementation and app development.”

Lumos’ cheapest advertising package starts at $127 per month when paid semi-annually. This will provide five screens that will generate an estimated 10,000 impressions with two different ads. The most expensive package is a custom price, but the last priced package is the $680-a-month “fast growing” package, which employs 40 screens with four different ads and gets an estimated 53,333 impressions.