Rob Hango-Zada is the kind of person who lights up a room with his charm and energy. He’s outgoing, confident, and endlessly curious – a natural-born leader with a knack for turning big ideas into reality. Visiting him at the Shippit office in Sydney, he greets us with a warm, easy-going smile, his enthusiasm for what he does immediately clear.
“I was one of those kids that would always get in trouble for pulling apart their toys,” Rob recalls with a laugh. “I’d get the most amazing new toy, with the latest electronics, and I’d pull it apart to figure out how it worked. But I’d never put them back together and got in big trouble by my old man.”
His love for understanding how things tick followed him to university, where he enrolled in a business and IT program at UNSW. It was there that he met his future business partner, Will, under circumstances that seemed almost fated. “The classic story and the one we always go with is it was love at first sight,” Rob jokes. “There we were, first day of university, our eyes met from across the room – two six-foot-two dudes who didn’t hail from the same place as everybody else on the scholarship program.”
After university, Rob landed a job at Proctor and Gamble, where he continued to satisfy his curiosity by analysing consumer behaviour. “Similar to picking apart toys,” he says, “I was picking apart consumers. I would go and understand why people do what they do.” From rural villages in India, where he studied a man’s shaving rituals, to impoverished communities in Thailand, where he investigated why women bought certain conditioners, Rob was driven by a desire to understand the ‘why’ behind consumer choices.
Despite his success, Rob couldn’t help but feel disconnected from the passion he saw in his colleagues. “When I used to work in big corporates, I couldn’t ever understand why people were so passionate about what they did,” he admits. “You’re getting paid to do the job, and you shouldn’t give any more than you need to – was my default philosophy.”
That mindset shifted dramatically during a casual beer with Will. As they caught up, they vented their frustrations over recent delivery mishaps – Will’s with a vacuum cleaner and Rob’s with missed packages. Their conversation soon turned into a revelation. “We thought, well, hang on a minute, e-commerce is going to grow, and if delivery experiences are this bad, it’s not going to work. So, we should probably do something about it.” And that was the moment Shippit was born.
Belief – both self-belief and the belief of others—became a cornerstone of Shippit’s early journey. The early days were a grind, with Rob and Will “beating th – drum” to prove their worth by winning new customers and building out their product. “Will and I always operate with the belief that we’re not the sharpest tools in the shed, but we know how to surround ourselves with really smart people,” Rob says. They weren’t afraid to reach out, even cold-calling potential mentors on LinkedIn. “Unashamedly, we would reach out to people cold on LinkedIn because they’d inspired us, and say, ‘Look, can we come and meet with you? We’ll buy you a coffee. We just want to have a chat. We want to share our idea with you. We want to get your feedback.’”
Their humility and genuine curiosity opened doors. “People give you their honest opinion, and they tell you like it is,” Rob says. “The tech community in Australia is just outstanding because everybody pays it forward. We didn’t realize that when we started doing this, but it was like cutting a hot knife through butter. Every time we’d reach out to somebody, they’d say yes, and we’d go and spend time with them.”
A few years ago, Shippit set an ambitious goal to power 200 million deliveries without waste. “Impossible,” they were told. After all, “you can never do anything without waste.” And on top of that, 200 million deliveries is a staggering number, especially for the Australian market. “Will we get there by mid-June 2025? I’m not sure,” Rob admits, “but we’re probably halfway there today.”
The idea of “without waste” is more than just a goal for Rob; it’s a mission that sets Shippit apart from others in the industry. “A lot of businesses talk about sustainability in a way that’s, you know, we’re offsetting what we do in the office, we’re making sure that we use green energy to power our lights, our servers are green, all that sort of stuff,” Rob notes. But for Shippit, sustainability isn’t just about what happens in the office; it’s about the broader impact their technology has on the logistics industry as a whole.
For Rob, success isn’t just measured in numbers or profit margins. It’s about the ripple effect—how their mission can inspire change on a much larger scale. “If we can start the dialogue with courier companies around electrification of fleets, solar power, and the sustainability of the industry,” Rob adds, “I mean, we’ve succeeded already.”
Rob’s decade in the industry has taught him that stasis is the enemy of progress. “Stasis is the antithesis of tech,” he notes. “Everything moves at 1,000 miles an hour. What was cool 10 years ago is not cool anymore.” For him, the real challenge is not about jumping on the latest trend but about consistently solving problems in the best way possible, even if it means disrupting your own methods. “You can’t saturate the market with more tech solutions and make the industry better,” Rob points out. “What is cool now is the space of consolidation and refinement—how things become much better.”
That’s the kind of legacy Rob envisions for Shippit. “I want to see Shippit as that generational business, which a lot of people tend to look toward for ideas around how to build a sustainable business and how to build a business that will stand the test of time.” As Rob sees it, the future isn’t just about growth – it’s about creating something that lasts.
