beU: Taking Over The Ethiopian Market
Sept. 30, 2022, 1:38 p.m.
As of 2020, statistics proved that China's online food delivery market generated the equivalent of $45 billion yearly — nearly double that of the US. China's food delivery apps now have the most extensive customer base covering over 500 million users, and its annual revenue for food delivery is over $100 billion.
According to raddi.co, cities like Shanghai and Beijing now boast of some of the world's most advanced delivery ecosystems, through which a meal can be at your doorstep within less than 30 minutes. The factors contributing to this are scale, accessibility, and innovation.
beU wants to rewrite the situation in Africa by employing China's food delivery business model in its business approach and become the leading delivery platform that creates an ecosystem where young people can thrive and where small businesses have the exposure they need.
beU delivery is an on-demand food delivery service in Africa. The delivery startup launched its MVP in June 2021 to offer a great selection of local restaurants and door-to-door food delivery that allows customers to have their favorite food from the comfort of their homes or office.
beU has a more evolved approach to the market due to these experiences accumulated from China. The company created a localized copy of those strategies to fit the market in Ethiopia. Before beU entered the Ethiopian market, local startup Deliver Addis had dominated the market for years since its establishment in 2015. In addition, there were already seven food delivery companies in the market. Still, in beU's eight months of operation, its market share surpassed Deliver Addis by 20%, becoming Ethiopia's new food delivery leader.
beU also benefited from the market structure advantage of the low saturation rate in Africa, which primarily helped beU to successfully explore Ethiopia, similar to the rapid success of Rappi in Latin America.
Founded by Hao Zheng and two other co-founders, Almas Beleshov and Matt Artemovich, the delivery company currently has over 100K downloads from just the city of Addis Ababa. That means 2 in every 100 people use the delivery service.
The app is straightforward to navigate and use; within three clicks, users can have their choice of food delivered. The app has a "sort and filter" feature that lets you sort and filter food items according to their price range and ratings. The beU app also boasts a "rate" button that allows people to rate the restaurant and the rider after delivery. Like the Bolt app, the beU app notifies customers of their order progress.
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Another approach beU is leveraging is the use of bicycles because it promotes a cleaner environment, reduces noise pollution, and involves a lower running cost. The approach is also perfect for beU as the food delivery startup is targeting an inclusive service for all classes of people. "beU has various options that fit every economic class because we want to break the image that food delivery is for fancy or select few people."
"We aim to be the leading delivery startup in Africa in two years and to secure our position as number one in five years. We will achieve that by making it our goal to provide unparalleled convenience for people with our service. By saving their time, money, and energy, we modernize people's lives and help them direct these resources into other aspects of their lives. beU will create an ecosystem where young people can thrive and a platform where small businesses get more customer exposure," a representative shared with DT Africa.
Against this same background, beU expects to raise a $4 million Pre-A round to expand into other African countries by the end of this year. However, its investors will stay confidential till after the round. beU will start its expansion plans with Uganda and Tanzania, then expand its business offerings to 10 other African countries.
"We plan to expand our services to new markets and eventually become the Super App of Africa. At present, food delivery is the core of our business. However, beU will expand to other fields in the future, becoming a super application covering a range of o2o services," beU elaborated.
tag: Africa, beU, Delivery Business, green innovation, Ethopia, Startup, China,
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Verny loves to write poetry, fiction and quotes. Her love for writing landed her in journalism. She loves gadgets and travelling to explore new places.