GCP – Nippy navigates its way to growth with Google Cloud

When Nippy was founded in Argentina, we set out to solve problems faced by gig-economy workers, especially immigrants. Imagine that you’ve arrived from another country, and you want to get started as a delivery driver, but you don’t own a vehicle or a cellphone. Maybe you don’t speak the language. It’s tough, but you’re determined to succeed.

That’s where Nippy can help. We provide independent workers with services, benefits, and opportunities to improve their lives. This includes insurance, health, legal advice, and financing tools so that they can start earning quickly and safely.

We started out about four years ago when our co-founders Diego Amondaray and Florencia Moroni met a freelance worker from Venezuela called Luis who had moved to Argentina in search of work to support his family.

Diego was a lawyer specializing in corporate and labor law and he understood the challenges facing Luis — from navigating the Argentine banking system to enrolling for healthcare and benefits. Luis became our first ‘Nipper’ and shortly after, Diego and Florencia officially founded the business. Today we have 19,000 active members in five countries and 400,000 people on the waiting list.

Rapid delivery of benefit packages

Our first business model was based on B2C relationships with freelance workers, who pay a monthly subscription for essential services. But as this community grew, we realized that we had something to offer businesses as well. Employers must comply with fast-changing legislation that applies to employee contracts and conditions, while minimizing workforce turnover. By becoming a Nippy partner, they can add a range of offers to their existing benefits package. Our services also help them comply with legislation in their country or region.

For example, Uber drivers can access favorable automobile leasing packages and cell phone plans created exclusively for delivery drivers. There are also special Nippy offers deals for freelance employees who work for delivery platforms such as Rappi and Paquery.

As nimble as a scooter driver weaving through traffic

My background is in digital product and strategy development and I also mentor digital businesses, which is how I first met the Nippy team. I’ve had a lot of experience with cloud platforms and was keen to deepen my understanding ofGoogle Cloud at Nippy.

It was a revelation. From a few proof of concepts, we now use Google Cloud to store all our data. We’ve also deployed Google Cloud tools includingBigQuery to build our data lake andPub/Sub to ingest events from other platforms that manage our web applications and end-user data. We are also migrating toDataflow for batch data processing that underpins our customer support team where we also useGoogle Chat to communicate with customers.

I would also call out the great support we get from our Google Cloud account manager. She has been fantastic helping us troubleshoot issues, while the whole Google Cloud team has a ‘human touch’ that is missing from other cloud providers. We’re also a member of theGoogle for Startups Cloud Program where we are eligible for credits that cover the cost of Google Cloud and Google Cloud tools for up to two years.

Driving towards a profitable future

We’re in a strong position to grow the business and offer new services. One of the things that I’m most proud of is our network of Nippy Centers, locations where members can use restrooms, grab a snack and a drink, recharge their cellphones, and access Wi-Fi. There’s space as well for bikes and scooters so we’re helping to reduce urban congestion, especially at busy junctions where freelance drivers tend to congregate.

From a technology perspective, artificial intelligence is an area where we hope to take advantage of Google Cloud machine learning and AI tools. We’ve gathered a huge amount of anonymized data from employee members relating to the number of journeys, demographics, vehicles, and other information. We can use this to develop algorithms that understand their needs and simplify member recruitment, retention, and payment processes.

With the help of Google Cloud, we can scale fast and enter new markets. Beyond Argentina, we’ve launched Nippy in Uruguay, Chile, and the Dominican Republic and we are now expanding into Mexico and more countries in the Caribbean.

Best of all, it means that we can continue to fulfill our mission to improve gig economy conditions in a way that benefits both employees and hiring organizations. This nicely aligns with one of Google Cloud’s own priorities to provide people information and make it universally accessible and useful. Argentina alone has nearly one hundred thousand delivery drivers, and that number is growing fast across all of Latin America. By standardizing on Google Cloud as our technology platform, we look forward to providing people with better working conditions, financial security, and other social advantages.

If you want to learn more about how Google Cloud can help your startup, visit our page hereto get more information about our program, and sign up for our communicationsto get a look at our community activities, digital events, special offers, and more.