My experience with Otipy

When put in a difficult, possibly threatening situation, we as humans tend to respond in one of two ways: fight or flight, where fight being useful only in a handful of circumstances. So naturally, when the COVID-19 pandemic started hitting every country one by one, our human instinct kicked in. Countries shutdown their borders,  flights stopped, entire industries came to a standstill and I, like every other residential school student, was forced to go home. I go to an international school and seeing my friends reschedule their flights and scramble to get out of the country gave me a glimpse into the actual destructive power of the pandemic. Even now, some of my friends are stuck with relatives outside their home countries. So when I got home, I was more concerned about what I can do to help. I guess being in an environment and community where they teach you how to take action subconsciously changed me, even if i thought that wasn’t the case.

After looking for things to do here and there, I got to know of a vegetable delivery startup called Otipy through a family friend. Their business model seemed simple, you sign up with them as a partner and everybody in your vicinity who orders produce through their app has them delivered to you, the partner in the morning. You then get a certain percentage of the sale price of each order under you as profit plus a bonus for achieving a certain number of orders per day. I saw this as an opportunity to serve a dual purpose, I could make sure that my community and my apartment complex remained isolated and a regular household task like going to get vegetables did not become a contributor to the spread of the virus, as well as using the profits I got to directly support people worst hit by the pandemic through donations. This was the start of an extremely impactful three month journey

Most kids my age think of social service as “something to do for college apps” and try to look for things that are more glamorous than useful and that would have been me. But this time, I looked at something of real use, which would make an impact right now. And boy was it far from glamorous. I would wake up at six-thirty am every morning, despite a strenuous academic routine forcing me to stay up late at night. I would go outside with a mask and gloves and wait for the delivery truck to come. The bags would be unloaded and I’d organise them and wait for people to come get them. I’d wait until eight-thirty, when most bags would have been picked up, after which I would start my day. But I think this experience taught me a very important skill - customer service. Even though I was only a distributor, I was also the point of contact, a liaison, between the company and the customers. The experience taught me the importance of customer service. There would often be times where people would get bags where some items were squashed or weren’t in the bags. There were often times when complete orders would be misplaced.  In times like these, I would often have to interact with frustrated or angry customers, situations where it was extremely important to maintain one’s own calm. It also allowed me to grow my conversational and social skills through interaction with various kinds of people almost every day.

The service that I did also meant that I would get paid by the company, but I was never in it for the money. People had lost their jobs, the country was experiencing one of its biggest migrant crisis ever. It felt wrong to me to keep everything I had earned for my own benefit. I decided to donate all the profits to charity, organisations or ventures that were working to those who had been worse hit by the pandemic than I. I found so many people trying to do good, including two teenagers here in my apartment complex, fighting the pandemic one small step at a time. This is what inspires me. I could have stopped at any moment, said that it was too boring. But I continued to do it for as long as possible because I knew it was the need of the hour. My experience taught me the true meaning of service, not doing the things that you feel are needed, but doing the things that those around us need. It has motivated me towards pursuing a career where I can help people through service. I’m grateful to have been able to contribute to the community around me during this tough time and will keep looking for ways to further do so too.