Student-run startup Kotu offers printing, delivery service

Sonny Desai hurried through North Village late Monday night, trekking through the frigid wind. Instead of taking shelter indoors, Desai, a third-year economics student, delivered a printed PowerPoint document to a student on Kelton Avenue.

Kotu Printing, a startup company Desai helped found, delivers printouts of emailed documents to professor’s mailboxes and students on campus and in Westwood.

Three minutes after he delivered the project, his phone pinged with another order.

“We’ve delivered all kinds of things, from papers to utility bills,” Desai said.

In October, four undergraduate students founded Kotu, a startup that offers printing services for $1 for every 10 pages, and $1.50 for every 10 pages of color printing. The service also charges a flat rate of $3 for delivery, guaranteed within 30 minutes.

Steve O’Dell, Kotu’s chief operations officer and a fourth-year history student, said the flat delivery fees offer an alternative to FedEx’s $20 charge to print and ship documents.

He added the first Kotu employee to claim a customer’s email prints the documents and personally delivers them to their destination. Kotu’s founders all operate from their dorms or off-campus apartments and use recycled paper and remanufactured ink cartridges for its printouts.

“Sometimes we’ve been able to finish orders to professors’ mailboxes in under 10 minutes,” O’Dell said. “It’s a bit of a rush, but we do what’s necessary to uphold our promise to customers.”

Terrell Gray, Kotu’s chief executive officer and second-year philosophy student, came up with the idea for Kotu after he noticed not all students have easy access to printers.

“It doesn’t make much sense for people to buy printers because they’re so expensive, especially if you can just call someone and have it delivered immediately,” O’Dell said.

On Oct. 15, Gray posted on several UCLA Facebook groups to gauge student interest in a printing and delivery service. Within 24 hours, he received more than 75 likes and six direct messages, which inspired him to start a company, Gray said.

Gray recruited three other students to Kotu through the pre-law professional fraternity Kappa Alpha Pi, Bruin Entrepreneurs and other startup companies, said Luke Chui, chief technology officer of Kotu and first-year computer science and engineering student.

In the past month, Kotu served more than 50 customers after the founders used word-of-mouth and social media marketing to spread the news, O’Dell said. He added many of their customers heard about Kotu from friends who had already used the service.

One client called Kotu at 10:30 p.m. to print fliers about her missing cat and found her cat the next day, O’Dell said.

Sophia Held, a fourth-year English student, said she used Kotu last Friday to deliver an essay to her professor’s mailbox.

“They got it time-stamped and everything,” Held said. “It saved me a lot of trouble because I didn’t have to worry about going to campus.”

Sophie Rosenoer, a fourth-year English student, said she used Kotu about six times in the past three weeks because it is reliable and cheap.

“It’s been really great because often they deliver hours before it needs to be done,” Rosenoer said. “I even used them to print homework assignments for the children I babysit for.”

All four of Kotu’s founders have previous experience with entrepreneurship and intend to continue developing their company.

“I’m not interested in a startup that we just have fun with,” Gray said. “I want Kotu to go global.”

Kotu has also delivered documents off campus as well as to Culver City. O’Dell said the founders are interested in expanding their business to offer printing and deliveries to high school students and professionals.

He added Kotu is looking for employees and interns to help with deliveries and expand its social media presence.

“The spirit of what it means to be an entrepreneur is working hard on an idea with a team,” O’Dell said. “It’s so exciting because every day something new comes up, we solve another problem and we get a little bit better.”