Today we’d like to introduce you to Bharat Pulgam
Hi Bharat, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Pulgam has been an entrepreneur since he was 14 years old when he developed and produced a modular, earbud-style headphone. He graduated from Wayzata High School in 2017 and went on to study business at the University of Minnesota. Two years into college, he came up with his next big idea. “The idea for the company was Pikup,” Pulgam says. “It’s like, ‘Hey, I’m going to the grocery store, do you need anything?’ because in the dorms, no one has cars.”
Pulgam teamed up with friends from high school to develop the idea. They secured “a couple hundred thousand dollars” from preseed investors. “Then we dropped out of school to go full-time.” That was 2019, and everything was looking up until the pandemic struck. “Then, nobody was in the dorms,” he says.
The setback was only temporary, however. As Pulgam waited out the pandemic at the family’s Maple Grove home, his mom provided inspiration for the evolution of Pikup. One day, she asked him to go to Costco, but he didn’t want to go for just one order. “She said, ‘Well then, what good are you?’” he says.
Pulgam ended up putting a post online for their neighborhood HOA, seeing if anyone else had orders they’d like picked up at the same time. He kept posting, and soon he had nine orders, then 30 orders. “I realized college students were great, but it’s people with kids who really need it,” Pulgam says.
With the software in hand from their first go-round, Pulgam and his co-founders retooled their efforts and, for two years, their service focused on neighbors picking up orders for neighbors. Then, in 2022, Pikup became Buncha, and the service transitioned to a driver-based delivery service with the idea being to “get a buncha people to order together at the same time, to help them save money together,” he says.
Pulgam says they only charge a standard $3.45 delivery fee. Buncha makes its money through retailer relationships—the retailers pay a commission on each sale. He notes that their drivers are all full-time employees in order to maintain a high-quality service.
Today, Buncha is a 50-person team stretched between the Twin Cities headquarters, engineering offices in Delhi and its newest market in Denver. Buncha currently serves much of the Twin Cities and is adding new ZIP codes all the time.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
raising money as a young guy has not been easy, trying to find customer adoption, people don’t love delivery services! We work hard to break that stigma
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Find people on Linkedin and DM!
Pricing:
- 3.45 per Delivery
- 99 a year unlimited delivery
Contact Info:
- Website: https://gobuncha.com
- Instagram: @gobuncha
