Inspiration can strike in any number of ways.
For Vijay Chetty, it came from looking at his mailbox.
It was his wife’s birthday in February 2021 and while picking up the mail, he said, “It suddenly dawned on me. Why can’t we take this physical mailbox to the cloud.”
Vijay stood at his mailbox, staring at it for about a half-hour. And then he began to think hard about turning inspiration to innovation.
“I didn’t have all the answers,” he said. “I was just visualizing it, imagining it. That’s the day I never looked back. I came back inside, had a cup of coffee, sat down and started researching the possibilities. Who else is doing this? Is it doable? How’s it going to happen?”
Over the next two-and-a-half years, Vijay raised capital, built the code and hired an engineering team, all with the goal of creating a sustainable solution to a problem he identified while looking at his mailbox.
“I am passionate about this,” he said. “This is my mission in life. I want to get rid of paper completely. And that physical mailbox in front of our home, in a couple of years from now, or two, three, five years, I don’t know the timeline, but that will be a relic, that mailbox should be gone. That’s what I’m going after.”
According to Vijay, businesses each year spend $320 billion in the U.S. and $1.6 trillion globally for paper mail while failing to secure adequate ROI. He also said 68 million trees in the U.S. and 400 million trees globally are needed to meet the demand for paper mail.
His solution is Zipinmail, the open, end-to-end virtual mailbox he and his team have created.
Zipinmail delivers mail digitally to a virtual mailing address, using an address-based digital delivery platform. Mailboxes can be accessed with a cell phone. And Zipinmail has created an “All-In-One Virtual Mailbox Platform” that enables local businesses to reach their audience by Zip Code via Mass Zipinmail, Email, Text, WhatsApp and Coupons.
So what’s the upshot?
Vijay said businesses can save more than 80% of time and money compared to any mass email, mass text or direct mail platform.
“Paper,” he said, “is a waste of resources.”
Vijay’s interest in sustainability and reducing paper waste stretches back 20 years. At one company, he introduced electronic coupons. At another company, he tackled the waste associated with direct mail.
“There is little that resonates louder for me than my passion to get rid of wasted paper in the mail,” Vijay said. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I forget to go to my mailbox all the time. But I’m always on the computer. As a consumer, that’s what speaks out to me the most, just out of my own forgetfulness.”
Driving everything Vijay does is transparency.
“One of the founding values for us is transparency, making sure that, whatever we save, whatever we do, has to be absolutely transparent,” he said. “And accountability goes hand in hand with transparency. Accountability is very important.”
Visit zipinmail.com to learn more.
