It’s not every day that a Founder steps into the shoes of his clients, but that is exactly what Raimonds Jurgelis is doing. Recently he’s been waking up at 6am to join workers at his local post office in Riga, Latvia to deliver letters and parcels using his creation, the Bruntor Cargo. The 1 metre 50 long and 1 metre 20 tall, 4 wheeled electric scooter, which holds a cargo box at its head, secured first place in the mobility category during EIT’s Jumpstarter competition in 2022. In addition to winning EIT’s Jumpstarter competition, Bruntor Cargo has also become part of EIT Urban Mobility’s start-up portfolio, after participating in the Investment Readiness Programme.

Bruntor’s concept of a cargo scooter for everyday use was first born during another tournament, the Hackathon, which took place at the start of the year. The solution, from the Latvian hardware startup, started off as an electric off-road skateboard, but then Raimonds had “the idea that there should be some kind of four wheeled vehicle that is more stable than an electric scooter.” The need for an electric cargo scooter truly hit home when Raimonds encountered an everyday dilemma: “I came up with the idea when I was at my local postal office picking up a parcel (…) I did it with my electric skateboard and on my way back my wife called me, asking can you go to the store and grab something for home? I couldn’t because I couldn’t carry any more things.” explained Raimonds. During the journey back home to swap his electric scooter for a more suitable mode of transport, namely a car, he thought “there should be something that can replace a car” in a situation like this.

At Hackathon, “I tried to see if this idea had any potential” so the Bruntor team created their very first prototype where a cat carrier acted as a cargo box. The non-functional model wowed enough to win the competition.

Their success gave them confidence to apply for EIT’s Jumpstarter competition later that year. After being selected out of 30 teams to be part of the final 15 during the bootcamp stage, Bruntor was able to gain more knowledge from mentors. Their success continued when they made it to the final 6 during the business plan evaluation stage. All that was left was the Grand Final, “The week before, I was pitching to myself in the mirror every day for like 6 hours (…) even when we were in Kraków, I didn’t visit the city much or hang in the bar because I was practising my pitch.” At one point the Founder felt like throwing in the towel, but a colleague reminded him that “we cannot do that because we took the place of someone else who was most probably trying to get to the final, we cannot leave.” At the bootcamp stage of the competition, the Bruntor team was able to gain more knowledge from mentors.

Their resilience and hard work paid off when they took home the €10,000 prize money which they poured back into the company, developing Bruntor Cargo further. Winning EIT’s Jumpstarter competition “gave us confidence, it gave us approval from the experts that we were doing something right. For first time founders, it’s important to have this expert approval, it gives us the necessary steps to go forward.”  The team decided against making the scooter available for the public and turned their focus to delivery industries, specifically, the postal service.

Raimond’s local post office is Bruntor’s first official customer. They “were looking for some kind of vehicle that could replace the bicycle and that could improve the mobility of a walking postman as there are areas in the city, especially in high density zones, where using a bicycle doesn’t make sense as the distances between the stops are very small, and the postmen are then just walking around, carrying post and parcels in backpacks and pushing trolleys which is not efficient.”

The Bruntor’s step on and off feature means that “even if our solution is five kilometres slower than a cargo bike(…) postal workers still save time at drop off points because they don’t have to park or put Bruntor Cargo into place. On Bruntor, you get on the vehicle and a couple seconds later you are at the top speed, whereas on an electric bike it takes much longer to get to the top speed.”

Since accompanying postal workers on a daily basis, Raimonds says he’s received good feedback. So far during his observations of postmen and women using the product, he’s been told “they are very happy because they don’t have to walk, they don’t have to carry anything or push the trolleys or pull them around.”

Micromobility has been found to address physical and mental health as well as inclusiveness concerns, and the ease at which it can be driven also has a health appeal for postmen and women. The job of postmen and women can be physically demanding with workers often standing for long periods of time, the ones who choose bikes as their mode of transport will need good physical stamina. “The average postman according to statistics is around 45 years old, and those people aren’t super fast learners, they have to be fit enough to ride a bicycle.”

The Bruntor is much less energy consuming, with customers only needing to press a button to get it moving. Raimonds believes this could have a social impact on the postal sector, “our solution also helps attract younger people to this profession, it’s kind of a hard job and young people are not trying to do that. Stepping on and stepping off is the only thing the employee has to do, so in this way, the industry could increase the number of employees that can do the job. This could help solve shortage issues.”

The vehicles used to deliver post are typically large vans that clog up traffic flow, “they can get stuck in traffic jams where they can’t really do anything”, this means there’ll be a drop in productivity, but it also creates a vicious cycle “where more vans are being sent out” in a bid to make more deliveries but that just ramps up traffic congestion. Whereas “Bruntor can be used on cycle lanes, which helps to avoid traffic jams.” The cargo e-scooter “is fully flexible in its compartment size, the largest cargo compartment on this small sized vehicle is up to 650 litres.” The interchangeable cargo box means it takes up much less than a large van would, and can easily be parked on the pavement.

Raimonds believes Bruntor may also boost productivity. The cargo box carries much less than a large van, but the vehicles “are slower in the city than Bruntor. The cargo scooter can deliver the same amount of parcels as a van per day if we are travelling only up to five kilometres from pick up points.”

There are increasing concerns over the safety of electric scooters, Raimonds says his solution is more secure, “compared to a regular kick scooter. Its cargo compartment makes it more stable, if it goes over a pothole at top speed, and it’s more stable with four wheels, of course.”

After building more resilience during EIT’s Jumpstarter, the Bruntor cargo founder says “the biggest thing” he’s learned is “we cannot give up on what we have started to get to our goal, this keeps us motivated.” Raimonds still believes the start-up has a long way to go, “at the moment we are looking for an investment of €500,000 which will help us grow the team, to develop the vehicle even further. It will help us to get to the point where we can secure our first large contracts with companies, and then of course there will be the next steps of building a factory or building the company to the next level.”