‘Lost and found’ made easy with new service

ReturnHound founder Kavit Handa

To invent or start something new, they say you need a good imagination, but for travel-savvy businessman Kavit Handa, it was his daughter’s tears that worked as motivation.
His UAE-based startup ReturnHound is redefining the meaning of ‘lost and found’. ReturnHound offers a solution to the age-old problem of lost property, providing the only global, end-to-end and multilingual digital platform of its kind.
When Kavit’s daughter Sienna lost her cherished Minnie Mouse cuddly toy while they were holidaying at a five-star Maldives hotel last year, the then six-year-old was distraught. What followed was a series of long distance phone calls, a lot of put-on-hold music, a bit of yelling — but no mouse. For Kavit, lost needed to equate to being found, minus the meltdowns. Just four months later, and a team including his equally entrepreneurial wife Salina Handa, founder of the UAE’s largest independent spa chain SensAsia Urban Spa — ReturnHound was founded!
“When you have to get something back, and each stage seems like a mission, I realised we were not the only ones who lost things, and promptly began to conceptualise how finding them again could be managed far better. From start to finish, it took four months to build the product, but this speed is very much down to the fantastic and dedicated team behind ReturnHound,” Kavit said.
With over 250,000 belongings going missing in hotels, airports and on aeroplanes worldwide every day, managing lost property zaps time, energy, morale and man-hours in the hospitality industry. Add to that, the frustration felt by the people desperately searching for their belongings, and the problem is grows in magnitude.
This is where ReturnHound comes in. The company works for everybody who lose things, but is already proving invaluable to the hotel industry. Hyatt Hotels and Resorts are currently user-testing ReturnHound’s just-launched system across their portfolio.
ReturnHound only requests that they charge the customer a courier free, should the latter elect to have their lost item returned to them directly. They also have the option to collect the item from the hotel or outlet themselves, and in such cases there are no charges for the ReturnHound service at all.
The company has already established a firm relationship and contract with leading international delivery and logistics provider, Aramex. Chief Executive Officer of Aramex, Hussein Hachem, says, “We are very excited to be partners and investors with ReturnHound. This will change lost and found globally.”
The startup also set up the RH Foundation, a charitable platform that the company will use to make significant donations to underprivileged children in Africa — a cause close to Kavit’s heart.
“ReturnHound can work for airports, shopping centres, entertainment venues, taxis… the list goes on. Our initial focus is on hotels because lost and found is a daily struggle for them,” Kavit says.
Talking about the his team and how it works, Kavit said: “It is a pretty dynamic group of people based in Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai and Cape Town South Africa, and growing rapidly. The team is currently made up of 14 people, eight different nationalities, and a dog.”—
saman@khaleejtimes.com