Textbook Geniuses – Zookal Insight

Chris Zaharia the Chief Technology Officer at Zookal, has been there since the beginning and gave us an insight into what it takes to get a start up off the ground.Chris met fellow Zookal co-founders Ahmed Haider, Rehan Ahmad and Tia Saunders at an entreprenurial event in 2008, hosted by the Entreprenurial Society at the University of Technology, Sydney, run by Haider Rehan and Saunders.

Following that, Ahmed’s friend and fellow co-founder Rehan Ahmad realised his frustration at the price of textbooks that he was only using for a semester. He wondered if there was a business model in renting them out the same way we rent out videos and DVDs. A year after the event, he, Ahmed and Tia contacted Chris, which resulted in a long lunch, after which Chris was brought on as a software developer to take the company online.

“[At the time] I was a graduate software engineer at Suncorp, working on their AAMI and GIO price-quote applications,” he said of his early days at Zookal, “And would work on the Zookal website at night and during the weekends and any holidays from my office job. I had little time for anything else.”

The team would work from home, or hire out co-sharing spaces at the Australian Technology Park, while also working to sell their idea to friends and buying up a small selection of text books that they could trial renting out at the beginning of the following semester. “Our team was small, it felt more like friends working on a project, than actual work,” Chris said, “But for young entrepreneurs, we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into as we hadn’t done anything like this before. We weren’t even sure the idea would work and were risking both time and money, but pushed forward regardless.”

It all paid off on their official launch day, where the response to the service was overwhelmingly positive and they found themselves with more students to rent to than there were books available. “Over our first year, we grew to a point where we were able to raise enough venture capital to grow our library, rent our own office space and expand to other universities.”

“I was able to convince my bosses at Suncorp to let me split my time working at Suncorp and Zookal, [so] started working part time at Zookal after our seed capital raising.” Chris said, admitting he was both surprised and pleased that Suncorp were so supportive of his venture. “After we raised $1.2 million from Silicon Valley at the start of 2013, we all started working full time [for Zookal].”

And just like the place their funding came from, Zookal is a true Silion Valley style start up, right down to its culture. “Our office is a very colourful place,” said Chris, describing an office full of plush toys, Nerf guns, remote control helicopters, virtual reality gadgets and other toys scattered around the place. But don’t let the free fruit, soft drinks and massages fool you – they work incredibly hard. “We also combined our workspace with our warehouse, which makes it easier for our staff to work closely and fulfill orders while serving customers.”

But despite their success, the team hasn’t become complacent, and is always looking ahead. They’re working on a line of unmanned drones to deliver textbooks within Sydney’s CBD, which will be able to carry several textbooks at once and will allow for almost immediate delivery. Chris is also developing a system that combines brain-computer interface and virtual reality, allowing people to interact in a virtual environment using just their mind. “I’ve built a prototype for an educational context, where a user can use their mind to move in different directions and their hands to interact with objects.”

The device will allow people to virtually perform surgery, complete a chemistry experiment, design a city or play a video game. “I think the long term possibilities here are immense as this could change so many industries, from tourism to entertainment, once these technologies become more advanced and affordable for the average person.”

Zookal’s textbook rental service only services universities in Sydney and Melbourne at this stage, but plan to expand nationally soon and are already moving ahead with a service in Malaysia this year.

So what’s Chris’ advice for people who want to go out on their own? “Even if you have a job or are studying full time, [if you have a start up idea], if you work on it and stick to it, one day your business might reach the stage that you can leave everything else behind and truly work on what you enjoy.”