This archive report was first published on 1 July 2019.
July 1, 2019, marked the launch of Kwik Delivery, a pioneering on-demand delivery platform founded by French entrepreneur Romain Poirot-Lellig, in Lagos, Nigeria.
Backed by around $350,000, Kwik Delivery seeks to bring efficiency and reliability to the transportation of goods, persons, and services in Lagos and subsequently sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Romain Poirot-Lellig, CEO of Africa Delivery Technologies SAS, which operates Kwik Delivery: “Our model is quite different from existing companies: we are an asset-light company and we enroll the Kwiksters – our delivery partners – much like Uber is enrolling drivers. We provide them with equipment, training, financial services, technology, and incentives – as well as with a clear set of rules that we strictly enforce.”
Targeting a wide range of customers, including individuals, SMEs, restaurants, wholesalers, retailers, and ecommerce sites, as well as big companies in the FMCGs, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and automotive sectors, Kwik Delivery aims to solve the logistics and last-mile delivery problem in Lagos, with plans to expand to other countries across sub-Saharan Africa.
The platform allows users to hail Kwikster motorcycles for the delivery of various items, including food, parcels, shopping, documents, groceries, and electronics. The drivers are limited to carrying up to 20 kg in their kwik boxes, and passengers are not allowed for efficiency.
By providing a B2B on-demand and last-mile delivery platform, Kwik Delivery expects to help firms cut down on their own delivery fleets, which are expensive and difficult to manage. Company-run deliveries often cause delays due to poor infrastructure, population density, and traffic in Lagos, and also result in lost client goods due to poor tracking capabilities, poor mapping, and low competence among untrained drivers.
With a focus on business-to-business-to-customers (B2B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) verticals, Poirot-Lellig emphasizes the firm’s approach as a point-to-point delivery service with the power of technology. The app enables users to set up either a corporate or individual account and track their parcels until delivery. For payments, Kwik Delivery is partnering with companies such as Paga and Paystack.
Kwik corporate customers allow users to route multiple parcels and opt for immediate or later delivery for a one-off or recurrent deal.
As Kwik Delivery enters the market, it faces competition from various motorcycle startups, including Max, Gokada, Bolt, and Uber, ORide, among others. To succeed, Kwik has a long way to go before it overtakes its competitors.
