Kwik Delivery, founded by French entrepreneur Romain Poirot-Lellig is armed with around $350,000 to bring efficiency and reliability to the transportation of good, persons and services in Lagos, Nigeria and thereafter sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Romain Poirot-Lellig, the CEO Africa Delivery Technologies SAS which runs 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 individuals, SMEs, restaurants, wholesalers, retailers and ecommerce sites, and big companies in the FMCGs, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and automotive sectors, Kwik. Delivery aims to solve the logistics and last mile delivery problem in Lagos, Nigeria then expand to other countries across sub-Saharan Africa.
Just like other delivery companies, Kwik. Delivery will allow users to hail its Kwikster motorcycles for delivery of just about anything including food, parcels, shopping, documents, groceries, electronics among others. The drivers are allowed to carry up to 20 kg in their kwik boxes and the riders will not be allowed to carry passengers for efficiency.
The B2B on-demand and last-mile delivery platform expects to help firms cut down on their own delivery fleets which are expensive and are a pain to manage. Company-run delivery fleet often cause delays due to poor infrastructure, population density and traffic in Lagos as well as poor tracking capabilities, poor mapping and low competence among the untrained drivers.
With a focus on business-to-business-to-customers (B2B2C) and the business-to-business (B2B) verticals, Poirot-Lellig says the firm’s approach is point-to-point delivery service with the power of technology. The app allows users to set up either a corporate or individual account then allow them track their parcels until they are delivered.
For payments the firm says its partnering with companies such as Paga and Paystack. Kwik corporate customers allows a user to route many parcels and opt for right away or later delivery for a one-off or recurrent deal.
Kwik.Delivery is not launching in a vacuum. There are various motorcycle startups doing delivery in Nigeria and the market is becoming so lucrative everyday for mobility due to its huge population and its clogged public transport system. To win the market, Kwik has a long way to go before it overtakes Max, Gokada, Bolt and Uber, ORide among others.
