New grocer on the block
The online grocery market saw a 300% and 500% growth in Q3 2020 in the UAE and Saudi Arabia respectively, according to Wamda. The rapid growth of this segment has seen a surge in the number of local offerings within the GCC with almost every major supermarket starting their own online channels or capitalizing on the new arms of established online market places.
Yeepeey is a four month old e-grocery mobile app started by Monish Chandiramani, 25 and Jatin Sharma, 25. With the objective to eliminate mark-ups & reduce service fees, it is another player that has entered the UAE’s $1.1 billion worth e-grocery market.
What is Yeepeey? What makes it different from the many e-grocer’s in the market today?
To put it simply, Yeepey is an app for the customers where they get access to four to five supermarkets and groceries and almost 5,000 to 10,000 products, which are delivered to them in 30 to 45 minutes. What makes us a bit different is that we have no mark-up and list in-store prices, our delivery charges are subsidized (almost half of what our competitors are offering) and we replicate the same instore promotions on our platforms as well.
I had the idea in July 2019 when I realised that the markup on all the platforms I ordered food and grocery from was high and in some cases the delivery charges were higher than the product I ordered. When we saw that, we saw an opportunity and that’s how Yeepeey was born. We now have 50 merchants in our platform serving over 70 localities across Dubai. We house almost every product that you would find at a supermarket.
Are you an aggregator, online retailer or a marketplace?
We like to be known as a tech company, which brings together local groceries and supermarkets that don’t have their own online presence under one app. We do have our own delivery fleet but we keep it very tight. 80% of the deliveries are done by the merchants and 20% would be done by us.
How is the company funded?
Since the start, we have been self-funded as we have a well-established parent company. So it is our funds and the funds brought in by our parent company. However, by the end of this year we are looking to secure pre-seed investments for the company.
Walk me through your performance numbers. How much have you invested so far and how are your returns looking?
We have invested between $150,000 to one $175,000. As a company, we do not believe in outsourcing resources so everything is done in-house. In terms of merchant growth, we see 130 to 140 new registrations on the app on a daily basis, which shows us that there is a lot of opportunity in the market.
What are the main drawbacks and gaps you see in the way supermarkets and groceries in the region operate?
Inventory management is a huge challenge for everyone – from the smallest grocers to the biggest supermarket chains. What we do is, we actually go to the store physically, scan each and every product there and provide them the entire list. Sometimes they have 25,000 products in their inventory lists but in the physical store, there's only 6,000 to 7,000. So we help solve the problem of inventory.
We also provide them a platform where they get access to a lot of new customers in which they were constrained before. We give them a platform where we are doing deliveries in a six to seven kilometer radius. So they get access to a lot of new areas that they weren’t a part of previously.
One shortcoming in the supermarkets today is the lack of product information availability in the store or even online. Is this something you are looking into?
We are working on a few new features, one of which is to have the information of each product and the second is to show customer reviews so customers can put their reviews and evryone can read it on the app. We will also be integrating AI and Machine Learning to list the most purchased items on the top so it is easier and more customer friendly.
How do you plan on surviving the competition considering every major supermarket retailer has gone online?
Yes, the big supermarket chains have gone online with their own apps and have their own loyal customers, who will probably not come onto our platform. Having said that, as a customer you would rather have one app that covers 10 supermarkets than 10 apps. On our platform you get the speed as well as the quantity, where you don’t just get access to 5,000 to 10,000 products from a particular supermarket but 45,000 products at once.
What are your expansion plans?
So far we are only in Dubai. We will be entering Abu Dhabi next and then Sharjah and the other emirates. By Q2 2022, we will be looking into Saudi and then in the coming year in Kuwait and Bahrain where there is a lot of online traction. ■