In Nairobi, for you to deliver a package across the city, you have 4 choices: you can take it yourself, of course, but you can also send it along with someone else, or ask the office manager - should you happen to have one - to bring it over, but all three are time consuming. Alternatively, you can hire a boda boda guy - a motorbike courier, in local parlance - if you happen to trust him enough. But things only get more complicated if you're thinking nationally.
If you need to send a package across the country, you have 3 options: send it with a passenger you know and trust already heading in that direction, use the established matatu parcel delivery system, or defer to the G4S or DHL delivery systems. But if you're looking for delivery that will be seamless, secure, and affordable, your best bet is to go with a startup, and one that is barely 2 years old: Sendy.
Life in Africa Before Sendy
I first used Sendy in late 2014, as I worked at a startup that dealt in student discounts. We had to delivery products directly to student campuses. Before Sendy, student had to come to our office to pick their package, since they had to confirm it is in good condition. Obviously, that's not a convenient ask to make of your users, many of them student who had to travel quite a distance to come to our office.
One day, a former boss sent a number, asking me to place a delivery order - to Sendy. A rider was dispatched minutes after my call, he handled the delivery effortlessly, and we confirmed that the students had received the package. Maybe such ease is the status quo in Silicon Valley, but in Nairobi, it was enough to make me fall in love. With the stress of delivery no longer on our minds, we could focus on our business: negotiating discounts on the behalf of students.
Sendy has become my go-to for personal deliveries, and for companies I've worked for since then. Every package is scheduled and confirmed though the web or mobile app, every bundle is insured, and there's no battling traffic, either.
Where's Sendy Now?
Having raised between $500,000 to $ 1,000,000 in seed stage financing on October 2015, I decided to get in touch with Malika Judd, the Chief Operating Officer, to know how they are doing:
How was the fundraising process? For a Kenyan startup that’s looking to raise money, what should they consider?
Long - it took us about 9 months from when we started to fundraise to when we closed the round. Get a list of investor documents and start working on them... all investors ask for the same things and it's best if you just have one "Investor Google Drive' folder which you can share with all interested parties. This helps to manage communication with investors and speed up the process.
Talk to other startups at the same fundraising stage - they're probably talking to the same investors as you are and can share feedback on investor relations. Also talk to entrepreneurs 1 or 2 years ahead of you in company growth... but understand their time / advice is precious... so if you ask for time / a meeting come prepared and follow up on their advice and intros. Respect your fellow entrepreneurs who are busy. Don't waste their time.
How do you manage the expectations of the investors versus what the expectations of the team?
Transparency. Make it super clear what you've promised to the investors... and put those metrics on the wall for your whole team to see. Everyone together has to deliver to the investors so it's best if you loop your team in on Key Performance Indices (KPIs), goals, pressure, etc.
You are now at a different phase of the startup journey, growth, how is it managing a larger team?
A lot of 'Administration' work. Audits, Legal Contracts, Employment Contracts, Payroll, Accounting systems, Tax Consultants, etc. The bigger you get as a startup... the more you have to worry about other non-product / sales related challenges.
I just found out today that I'm supposed to have a copy of all my employee's National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), National Social Security Fund (NSSF), Personal Identification Number (PIN), and ID cards. I have their employment contracts and CVs... isn't that enough? Nope. The challenge as you get bigger is finding time to focus on the strategy as opposed to the everyday tasks of running a company.
I saw you introduced vans to your system. How is the reception so far?
Slow but growing. We have vans, pickups, 3-ton trucks, and cooler vans. We've also now introduced cyclists! The larger vehicles are higher priced deliveries and we end up seeing higher usage by corporates moving bulk items between locations / retail branches.
Customer experience is key in your industry, what are some of the tools that you use to help improve the efficiency and productivity of your team that handles customer service?
Helpscout, MailChimp, Slack, and an incredibly powerful Sendy backend system which we build from scratch to help us monitor orders and quality control.
It is great to see Sendy solving logistical problems. Factors like better access to internet and availability of laptops/computers make access to their service easier. It would be amazing for companies like OkHi (a local mapping startup) to work with Sendy in providing physical addresses to people who currently don’t have one, making it easier for one to find the exact location online.
I’m looking forward to seeing where they will be in a couple of years. What else do you think startup founders and employees need to know about the growth phase?