PideDirecto, a Mexico-based company, is developing a platform that enables local businesses in Latin America to sell directly to their consumers and deliver orders in less than 30 minutes.
Hussein Fawzi and Ronni Samir launched the company with Anders Steiner and Antonio Nacoud in September 2020. Fawzi, Samir and Nacoud knew each other from Iraq and studied together in college in Sweden, which is where they met Steiner.
After going their separate ways for a bit, they met up in Mexico and launched a corporate wellness program in 2018 that connected people with restaurants to order lunch or snacks. During the pandemic, many of their customers were working from home, and the demand for home deliveries went from 10% to 80%.
At the same time, customers were telling Fawzi and Samir that 25 to 30% of every sale was going to delivery marketplaces, something that was difficult to sustain. They were also at the mercy of the drivers and reliant on the marketplaces for their deliveries.
“That is when we started PideDirecto, to enable local businesses to scale their direct-to-consumer sales channels,” Fawzi said. “We build the online storefronts for the brands and operate logistics for businesses, like pharmacies, local retailers, restaurants and CPG brands. Think of us as Shopify with 30-minute deliveries.”
Today, the company announced an oversubscribed $5.25 million round of seed funding, led by JAM FUND, with participation from Soma Capital, Acacia Ventures, Kube VC, Flexport, Y Combinator and a group of individual investors from companies including Grubhub, Jeeves, Par Technologies, Uber and Google.
“PideDirecto is making it simple and cost effective for brands to build a scalable direct to consumer sales channel within minutes,” Justin Mateen, founder of JAM FUND, said via email. “I am excited to support the team’s mission to empower brands to expand their reach and own their customer relationship.“
Since its launch a year ago, the company has grown 32% month over month, has approximately 1,000 brand clients and has processed more than 500,000 orders.
PideDirecto charges customers like a SaaS model, with pricing starting at $1,900 a month, which includes delivery service and marketing tools. Other levels include a website, unlimited ordering and advanced marketing tools. Delivery fees are paid by the consumer, Fawzi said.
While there are delivery services and ordering apps in Latin America, Samir added that very few third-party companies are offering a complete suite of products. This enables companies to be on marketplaces, but to own every sales channel and provide the same level of customer service no matter what communication method is being used.
“Their business is to sell, but many people don’t realize that logistics and e-commerce are two different businesses,” Samir added.
The new capital will be used to build out a technology team for future product features. PideDirecto will also look into marketing and to scale its presence in Mexico as well as expanding into new countries, like Colombia and Costa Rica, by the end of next year.
As it now gears up to raise a Series A round, Fawzi said the company’s aim is to build an all-in-one platform for businesses to manage and scale online sales. It is focusing on direct integration with marketplaces and onboarding brands into its operating system.
“The future of commerce is a hybrid one where you will have to service the client on every sales channel,” he added. “We are building out the necessary infrastructure that merchants need to do this and leveraging technology for the online storefront, the payment solutions, CRM data and marketing and logistics.”
via https://www.aiupnow.com
Christine Hall, Khareem Sudlow
