Club Feature: Swyft
Each Wednesday and Saturday, Exonians, through a student facilitated organization named “Swyft,” order from local restaurants that do not offer delivery, such as McDonalds, Las Olas Taqueria and Pad Thai Restaurant.
Without a faculty adviser, the group of students, led by CEO Spencer Burleigh, CIO Bharat Arimilli and COO Bhargav Arimilli, started the club by developing a website that offers a user-friendly system for Exonians to order and purchase food from local restaurants.
Swyft was founded on Sep. 3, 2014 after a club named “Exeter Company” shut down for liability issues, as the external driver who carried out the orders was too big of a risk for the Academy, according to Bhargav. In addition to the unsafe connections with drivers, Exeter Company was marked by students as unreliable, for they often either delivered late or not at all after receiving the orders of students. At first, Bhargav said that it was difficult to remove this bad name.
“It was difficult at the beginning of the year because Exeter Company didn’t have a great reputation, so the first term we had to spend detaching ourselves from that reputation—you know, we are not Exeter Company, we are Swyft, we are different, a different set of people,” he said.
Over the summer, the three co-heads and some other members gathered over the summer of 2014 to begin making plans in order to assist in distinguishing Swyft from Exeter Company. As students used and recognized the reliability and professionalism of Swyft due to the completed orders and the updated website, they began to trust the ordering system more and more.
When Swyft’s reputation ameliorated, members of the club created a list of goals for their club. On the top of the list was Swyft’s main purpose: to give Exonians the opportunity to be part of a real business.
“We want to provide a space where kids can actually be a part of something real, serve real people and be part of a team, and I think we’ve been successful so far with that,” Bhargav said.
Likewise, Bharat explained that their original intent was to allow students to exercise their skills in a real-world environment. “It’s not about theory. It’s not like going to a computer science class, you’re actually doing something for real people,” he said. “That’s what I enjoy about it.”
Although it is a representation of a real world business, Burleigh noted that Swyft is a place where students can learn from their mistakes for future reference. He said that making a mistake does not mean the end of the world at Swyft. He and the members of the club know that any mistakes they make at the organization will teach him for future reference about what to do and what not to do in the real world.
“So if you to go and work in the real business world—I’m interested in starting a business at some point—[you] will know not to do specific things,” he said. “You can make the mistake here so that you don’t make the same mistake later on in life.”
In addition to giving a chance for students to participate in a real world experience, Swyft hopes to support local businesses by expanding its customer base. By adding over one thousand students to the list of consumers, Swyft boosts the revenue of these local restaurants.
Another policy of the club is to donate all profit that it earns. Swyft earns about $150-200 of daily revenue, and around $20-30 in profit. According to Bhargav, the individuals in the club do not pocket any of the money; rather, the club either gives it to ESSO or invests it in the development of its website and tools. Furthermore, Swyft is currently working on using its profits for charity work. According to Burleigh, one charity project Swyft has started revolves around the idea of donating shoes to more poor areas in Africa.
Although Swyft profits a significant amount of money each week, the club is able to function while meeting only a few times each week. Bhargav explained that Swyft is a low commitment club, congregating for only about 30 minutes per week. With minimal commitment, the club has gathered 29 members, in addition to its three board members.
However, to keep the business running, the three board members spend extra time discussing and brainstorming ways to make the club run more efficiently.
One of the club’s biggest accomplishments was Bharat’s development of an intuitive and accessible website. In the winter term of 2014-15, Bharat placed the finishing touches on a clean and useful website from which students can order.
“Instead of using paper and all that stuff, we realized we could totally be about the modern technology, like most real businesses,” he said. “From end to end, we developed it so that we could completely rely on technology instead of using paper and google docs. That was the inspiration for doing the website.”
Another reason for the website was to distinguish Swyft from other organizations on campus, most of whom do not have this level of web infrastructure. He hopes that because Swyft’s website is modern and impressive, the club will attract more customers.
Day by day, Swyft has gained popularity amongst the Exeter community. Although Swyft has only operated for one year, it has already encountered a large amount of success in its real world business. In the years to come, Swyft hopes to continue to expand. Bhargav notes that even though the members of the club are only students—not professional workers—they put forth their best efforts to be real world entrepreneurs. And a lot of the time, as demonstrated by the effectiveness of the modern website and connections involving real world partnerships, they are successful.
“We really try to operate as much as a real business as possible,” he said. “Obviously we are still students, so there are limitations, but we try to be as professional as possible in what we do. We have weekly meetings, we have board meetings and we vote on issues that we think are important, [in the hopes of attracting] more of member involvement in Swyft.”