Online delivery startup Jalo has launched in Abuja, Nigeria, offering on on-demand delivery application for businesses and individuals.
E-courier services are becoming increasingly common, both in Nigeria with the likes of MAX.ng and ACE.ng but also further afield in the form of Kenya’s Sendy and South Africa’s WumDrop.
Jalo, spun out of venture building studio Think Hat Labs, is the latest addition to this list, offering a web based application that allows users to place delivery requests and have them fulfilled by an assigned delivery agent within two hours.
Initially launched in March, Jalo has successfully completed over 200 deliveries, with founder Nkiru Emina telling Disrupt Africa the service was primarily B2B but also useful for individuals.
“Jalo can take delivery of anything from food, laptops, to documents – we’ve even had someone use Jalo to pick-up money from a bank and have it delivered to their house. As long as it’s not illegal, we’ll deliver it,” he said.
Emina said the on-demand economy was changing lives across Africa, and Jalo was taking advantage of this one delivery at a time.
“We’re positioning Jalo to be the go-to on-demand delivery infrastructure in Nigeria, Africa and the world at large,” he said.
The startup plans to expand into other states in Nigeria within the next 18 months, and other African countries over the next few years. Emina said the one thing that remained common for businesses and consumers across the continent was the need for an efficient and fast last mile delivery system.
“Logistics is the heart and soul of commerce, however delivering goods can be a pain in the bum,” he said. “In addition to this, many hurdles are associated with the delivery process and its fulfillment – poor quality and unsafe road networks, questions around the security of payment systems, reliability and timeliness are all hurdles that still need to be considered and tackled.”
Jalo makes money through delivery fees, service charges for the purchase of items done on behalf of customers, and commission from merchants listed on out Get-It platform.
