South Africa’s WumDrop, an on demand courier service that lets you send anything to anyone over small distances in a small amount of time, for small money via mobile app, website, or ecommerce checkout recently launched in Cape Town andhas plans to expand across the country by year end.
Founded by Roy Borole and Simon Hartley, WumDrop is a pivot from the founders first business, WumWum.com, a diaper subscription service.
Speaking to TechMoran, Simon Hartley said, “WumDrop was born out of necessity. My business parter – Roy Borole – and I launched an diaper subscription device at the end of 2013, called WumWum.com. In the process of setting up the business, the problem of delivery reared it’s head again and again. The people we were contracting to deliver our products weren’t good enough, and we were hearing the same from a lot of people with online stores. Long story short, we had the need to work out how to fix deliveries, and we saw an opportunity to extend the favour to everyone else.
“In the process of setting up the business, the problem of delivery reared it’s head again and again. The people we were contracting to deliver our products weren’t good enough, and we were hearing the same from a lot of people with online stores. Long story short, we had the need to work out how to fix deliveries, and we saw an opportunity to extend the favour to everyone else.
The firm says its target market is ecommerce businesses, brick and mortar stores with an online footprint, businesses in need of a super fast courier solution, and the man in the street who forgot his wallet at his friend’s barbecue last night.
“So far clients include Rosetta Roastery, SnapScan, and multiple national ecommerce entities that we’re in trial with. We charge R7 per kilometre, with a minimum fare of R35. Drivers take 70% of the fare, and we keep 30% and so far, we don’t have competition. We represent a way for existing courier companies to pick up slack on their existing capacity,” said Hartley adding that the national postal and courier services market in South Africa alone is worth R9.8 billion and WumDrop is targeting the R1.5 billion last mile delivery market.
“So far we’ve found it easy to access cash and mentorship. We’ve heard contrary reports, but our experience of the SA startup space thus far has been positive. Hartley told TechMoran. “We’re in the process of closing out a series of seed funding, which will take our funding to R825,000 at a pre-money valuation of R2,5 million.”
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WumDrop launches at a time when ecommerce is hittig up in Africa and logistics is one of the major challenge hindering it. Other challenges include lack of bandwidth and online payments among others.
