Nigeria’s Jand2Gidi is helping to take the guesswork out of logistics for global brands who wish to deliver lifestyle goods to Africa through the use of shipping APIs that power hassle-free, trackable and affordable importation and last mile delivery services.
Having offered importation and last mile delivery services to the Nigerian B2C market since 2013, co-founder Kikelomo Fola-Ogunniya said the company set up a new business to offer importation and last-mile services to B2B and B2B2C companies whose users are engaged in the cross-border flow of payments and goods.
“This saves them the stress of having to deal with bureaucratic bottlenecks, crazy customs fees, and the uncertain local terrain,” she told Disrupt Africa.
The new Jand2Gidi API and web portal business was formed in July 2021, and commenced operations in September 2022.
“Our competitors are the likes of DHL, UPS, Fedex, GIG informal delivery companies across Africa, personal shoppers, tech-enabled logistics platforms and aggregators as well as international stores delivering to Africa,” said Fola-Ogunniya.
“Our bigger competitors do not have the flexibility and modularity in operations and technology to support the integration requirements of these startups, and most add additional processing charges at the end of a delivery, making it notoriously difficult to accurately pre-charge customers for deliveries, which is a requirement for most businesses in our target market.”
The smaller-sized or informal delivery companies, meanwhile, do have some agility, but are mostly stuck with manual systems since they mostly do not have funding to build technologies around their operations.
“In fact, the seemingly more astute ones use Excel spreadsheets instead of exercise books to keep track of delivery items,” said Fola-Ogunniya.
“The third segment are funded startups, some of whom have raised substantial investments to tackle shipping as part of their product offerings. They have great technology and a ready or well-curated audience, however, shipping is a very traditional service that requires interfacing and partnering with diverse stakeholders in addition to owning actual physical assets. Most funded startups are yet to raise enough money to actually build these shipping infrastructures, so many startups including YC-funded ones are forced to white-label our services, as we provide the underlying infrastructure that powers the shipping part of their service.”
Jand2Gidi itself is already a revenue-generating, self-funded business, with its existing B2C business entering its 10th year of continuous operations this year.
“During our two-month pivot of the API/Web portal we had three businesses onboarded, and we have recorded 100 per cent retention to date,” said Fola-Ogunniya.
In January, the startup was accepted into the Startupbootcamp AfriTech ASIP accelerator programme, and is now working on expansion.
“We currently operate from the UK, US, Canada and China. All goods come to Nigeria, but we have active plans to expand our operations to five European countries in the medium term and 10 in the long term. We will also establish mutually beneficial partnerships in import-vibrant countries such as Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa,” Fola-Ogunniya said.
