AWS Pioneers Project

To tackle the climate crisis, we have to address the world’s waste problem.

“It’s important to remember that 65% of greenhouse gases are caused by household consumption. Our vision is to enable a waste-free world.”

The Olio app uses mobile technology to connect people with their neighbours so that they can give away surplus food and household items. Started in 2015, it now has 8 million users and 200 million portions of food have been successfully given away.

Olio worked closely with AWS from the outset. “It was clear to us that we needed to work with a cloud provider who would be able to scale with us and could provide an extremely cost-effective solution, because we had very little financing for a very long time. In our early days we needed a solution that allowed us to turn on resources as and when we needed them." She also felt that AWS sat well with two of the company’s values – resourcefulness and ambition. "AWS offers a comprehensive toolkit. For founders, the key is to start with basic tools and gradually incorporate more advanced ones as your needs evolve."

One of the AWS services that Olio has used is Amazon ElastiCache, which provides the firm with quick access to cached data without the overheads of having to run database queries. "Using cached data allows us to quickly show our community their real-time impact – like water saved and carbon emissions avoided – without slowing down our database."

As a hyper-local company, Olio needs to understand exactly how to connect people to others living nearby. “AWS makes it very easy for us to do all of those geospatial calculations without degrading the performance of the app,” she said. More long-term, the firm is looking to integrate Amazon Bedrock which will allow the app to interface with multiple AI models. It is already using AI to make it easier to list items; users just take a photo and the AI system will turn that into a listing, complete with title and description.

This is particularly helpful for Olio’s army of volunteers, who collect and distribute food from over 8,000 business locations (including supermarkets, schools, hospitals and offices) and can be adding up to 50 listings in a couple of minutes. AI is also helping when it comes to the rules around what can and cannot be shared on the app, scanning images and rejecting those that aren’t allowed. “It saves time for our customer satisfaction team. If someone flags and reports an item manually, it goes to them - whereas if we can stop those listings before they even get onto the app, that reduces their workload,” said Clarke.

Long term she sees AI as playing a definitive role in helping Olio become profitable but also in making sure the app remains people-focused, by helping to manage community engagement. “We really think that AI can do an awful lot to make sure that Olio remains a happy, positive and optimistic space and doesn’t become toxic like so much social media,” she said. AI is going to be a key component for start-ups in future, she thinks.

“It’s so clear to me where the winds of change are happening and AI is absolutely inevitable. It will be a source of competitive advantage if you can become AI-native as quickly as possible.”

As for using AWS, she said it was a “no brainer” because it has built “a proposition that works really well for early stage founders”. Olio aims to reach 1 billion users by 2030, using AI to support the firm to solve the waste problem. “Long term, we see AI playing a crucial role in helping Olio innovate, grow and secure our profitability. I really believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help solve the world’s most pressing challenges.”