Afrifresh

Afrifresh is an on-demand grocery delivery platform facilitating doorstep deliveries of groceries, home essentials, pharmaceutical and farm produce in rural and urban areas of Zambia that will help reduce human contact during COVID-19. Our aim is to reduce human contact in order to curb the spread of the pandemic, to economically empower taxi drivers in the transport sector who may be out of business due to limited movement of people. We will equally help farmers find a market to sell their farm produce.  All payments will be made online with the option for mobile money and call in service for those without access to internet. Afrifresh allows people to stay at home and have all their groceries delivered to them. It is an e-commerce platform whose transactions between customers and traders can positively contribute to creating a stable economy.

The problems we are tackling are: -

1. The difficulty of people, especially elderly and disabled people to access healthy food and groceries during this crisis in a timely manner
2. Overcrowding and congestion in supermarkets that are operational
3. Some local stores closing and workers getting laid off due to reduced sales
4. Taxi drivers out of business due to fewer movements of people
5. Farmers incurring losses as their produce perishes due to low demand as sales plummet during COVID-19 crisis. In Zambia more than 20,000 smallholder farmers have been affected in finding a market for their farm produce and they also find it hard to access quality agriculture input suppliers. 

6. It is hard for traders outside of the capital city to easily order their good from manufactures and mostly spend days traveling incurring so many costs.

Our solution is creating an online platform (website and mobile application) where customers can order groceries in the comfort of their home during the crisis from their favourite local store and have them delivered to their doorstep within a reasonable time. Farmers will also have easy access to buying agriculture input on our website and have them delivered within a shorted possible time. Traders will also have easy access to shopping directly from manufactures. 

Our approach will be to create a unique supply chain distribution model that aggregates delivery drivers and stores nearby for fast delivery. Geofencing technology will be enabled on the system to only allow customers to order within their neighbourhood for fast delivery for those ordering groceries. Those without smartphone or access to the internet like farmers will be able to order by calling or access nearby agents within their locality. Payments will be made online through mobile money, VISA, Mastercard, e-wallet to avoid cash transactions which is one form that the COVID-19 virus can spread. 

All deliveries will be monitored and tracked in real time on a map across cities in real time from time of purchase to dispatch pickup and delivery

• Enable the elderly, women, children and disabled have easy access to ordering their groceries, pharmaceutical and healthy farm produce needs.
• Empower farmers to be able to sell their produce online and delivered to their target customers without being exposed or spreading the coronavirus
• Grocery workers will not be exposed to COVID-19 due to limited in-store customers
• Logistics companies, freelance drivers and taxi drivers will continue operating during the crisis as our delivery agents
• Flattening and subsequent plunging of the curve of the COVID-19 cases.
• The convenience of purchase of produce, pharmaceutical and grocery need from comfort of their home.
• Quality assurance of produce delivered
• Reduction in human contact and curb spread and local transmission of the pandemic
• Enhanced prosperity of smallholder farmers through an increase in selling price

Our solution is to help supermarkets, taxi drivers and farmers to be able to continue running and also find a market for their business. Many supermarkets have been closed and many taxi drivers are out of business due to less movements of people. Farmers are having their farm produce perish because they can't find a market. Our solution basically is to come help all 3 suppliers continue operations and also help expand their market reach.

What makes our solution innovative is that we have a unique distribution model that aggregates delivery drivers and stores nearby for fast delivery. Unlike our major competitor Afridelivery who purchase their own motorbikes for delivery we are not spending any amount in buying our own motorbike but just leverage on existing transportation in this case we are partnering with taxi drivers, trucks, freelance drivers making us have very low startup cost. The other solution we are providing is that for the first time we are providing customers the ability to order directly from their favourite supermarkets. Afridelivery currently makes 300 orders per day and they are just in one city as expansion is hard for them because they have to keep buying their own bikes to reach new markets. We plan to be in 5 major towns across the  country with our first year. 

Other value prepositions are

• Tie-ups with existing supermarkets, manufactures, wholesales and farmers 
• Partnership with logistics companies, freelance drivers, and Taxi drivers 
• Vast inventory 
• Extremely quick delivery model (2 hours) 
• No warehouses 
• No shiny delivery trucks

Our solution will be first of its kind in my country. We also want to have a unique catchy fun using more exciting animation marketing approach where we will leverage on social media trends and use influencers especially comedians which currently all our competitors are not utilizing.

• We will have detailed analytics reports for individual items, stores or overall grocery delivery business performance. 
• Rate & Review the delivery service or grocery store to maintain high service
• Complete financial accounting system to keep track of grocery store earnings and driver earnings
• Track grocery drivers in real time on a map across cities in real time
• Store-specific inventory & SKU management for admin & store owners to manage the grocery inventory.
• Track all grocery shopping & delivery orders across the website & app.
• Push messages to grocery store owners, drivers and customers directly from the admin.
• Manage dispatchers for different cities or zones.
• Integrated with secure payment gateway that is secure and can track any frauds
• Manage cash & card earnings for drivers with direct payments to driver bank accounts
• Detailed analytics reports for individual items, stores or overall grocery delivery business performance.
• Mobile responsive and SEO friendly with sitemap & slug generation.
• Setup and manage promotion codes and referral campaigns on both the grocery website & app.
• Option to go for mileage-based pricing or fixed pricing based on zones or distance for delivery fares especially for store owners who are ordering stock for their shops from suppliers (manufactures)

A good example of a company that uses this business model is Instacart https://www.instacart.com/ of USA that has so far raised $200 million at a valuation of $4.2 billion. Other companies that use this model are Shipt of USA, Grocer of India, Amazon fresh etc. In my country and other sub-Saharan countries we do not have a startup using this model for groceries, our closes competitor Afridelivery https://afridelivery.com/ are using a  model for restaurant and food delivery where they have combined restaurants as their main strength and 3 grocery stores that are not popular. The potential for higher growth for something like this is on demand.

A product demo of our solution from one of the technology partners  

With the current corona virus epidemic the expected outcome of our services are

• Increased transactions on the platform showing will be a measure of increased trading and access to goods
• Number of signed up drivers, stores, farmers and other traders will be a success measurement for the platform
• We will create more direct jobs to join our team and create opportunities for other businesses as well for instant Taxi driver who in my country are just primarily used to transport people. 
• Purchasing of groceries, pharmaceutical, farm produce and other home essentials will be made easy even post COVID-19. Productivity and revenue will also increase in grocery stores.
• We also expect people from outside of the capital where people come to buy their shop orders to be instead purchasing directly on our platform from suppliers and we facilitate delivery of their stock to their towns cutting down on costs.
• People will now have a variety and ability to buy their groceries from different supermarkets.
• Supermarkets will now be able to expand their market reach to people who stay in very far remote areas.
• People in the diaspora will be able to buy groceries easily for their families here

We are currently on prototyping and we are not yet fully in the market. We are expected to be serving 10,000 customers in our first year and in 5 years we expect that number to reach 200,000 customers and over 500 stores signed up on our platform, 2000 farmers, 1000 delivery partners across 5 cities

In the next year we want to be fully operational and running smoothly in 5 major towns of Zambia and a good steady growth. We aim at having 50 employees in our team.

Our goal in the next 5 years is that we want from our profits, 20% will be set aside to support and subsidise for the less fortunate in society and in need like the elderly, disabled, women and children (food subsidies, education support needs, and support of young entrepreneurs).

Our target will also be able to employee over 500 employees and support.

We want to also have a technology academy supporting innovation and creative youths

We want to be in 4 sub-Saharan countries namely Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa, Kenya

• Currently for us to start we need capital to hire developers to setup our technological system ($10,000) and then we will further need marketing and operational cost that will amount to ($15,000) for us to reach our first yearly target for a whole year but the most important one where we desperately need help even if we do not make it is setting up the technological infrastructure that will help us get started.
• In Africa in particular my country Zambia it is very hard to bootstrap or have access to finance for startups hence the more reason we have very less entrepreneurs making big impacts 
• The other barriers will be the culture of making people begin to appreciate the purchase of buying things online and getting them delivered as many people. A lot of trust and good customer experience will help us grow. 
• With the COVID-19pandemic this has significantly pushed the appreciation and use of technology even more unlike before many people in my country only used internet for social media. 

In terms of finances, we will keep applying for potential grants and if we do not manage to raise funds. We will start a freelancing service offering IT consultancy as the IT solution in my country is very low and people are not very literate when it comes to finding services like Fiver so we intend to be the middle men to help us raise the required capital for out technology infrastructure. For a start we will be providing school management systems to help raise capital. 

We will then purchase an off the shelf platform from a technology partner in India and customize as per our business model. This will help us reduce on costs and time for beginners

For culture we will make sure we localise our marketing into something customers can relate to for example an animation of a chicken dancing to a local dance asking people to order it. We will also ride on local catchy topic trends on social media and use that to our advantage

Not applicable

Currently have 5 people of which 3 are full time and 2 are contractors. This number will increase to 7 once we begin full operational

Muyunda Kaonga - Founder
Studied Bachelor of Computer Application from Chandigarh University, India. Muyunda has 6 years total work experience in corporate event management focusing in business development, IT support solutions, budgeting and planning, digital marketing.

Thomas Lungu - Chief Operations Officer
Holds a Bachelor of Business Science from Rhodes University South Africa. Thomas has worked in UK, SA, Australia and Zambia as a project manager, especially in sports management. Thomas is currently employed in the professional services industry as an associate

Rabecca Kaonga - Chief Financial Officer
Experienced Account Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the telecommunications industry in  southern Africa Region for over 9 years with focus on Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Skilled in 3G, Management, 2G, Telecommunications, and Value-Added Services (VAS). Strong sales and account management professional with a Degree focused in Economics from University of Zambia.

Benjamin - Animation
Founder of JX Animations studio a local (Zambian) Animation hub. 6 years experience in 2D & 3D Cartoon Adverts and other Motion Graphics.

Fernando Yako - Graphics Design
Known as Fern Gee he is the Founder of Four Media House with 40k following on social media an experienced photographer and graphics designer. Has done so many media works with Zambia’s top celebrities 

We have partnered with BongoHive https://bongohive.co.zm/, Zambia’s first technology and innovation hub that assist scalable startups of any background by enhancing skills, accelerating growth, strengthening networks, increasing collaboration, providing a forum for ideas exchange and reducing the barriers to entrepreneurship.

We also have also identified Appscrip https://www.appscrip.com/ for tech partnership, an Indian company evolved from years of experience making mobility solutions and being a tech solution provider for startups as 3Embed. They provide full suite of services tailored to the on demand, social , discovery , messaging and shopping platforms.

We will create a platform where users can order groceries from their favorite store and have them delivered to their doorstep within 2-hours. On every successful order we will charge a service fee and delivery fees. We will provide convenience and easy purchase of good and services cutting down on costs with awesome deals and offers from time to time

Revenue model – How we will make money

• Service charge - Afrifresh will also charge a 7% service charge on every order.
• Delivery Fee Every order processed by Afrifresh which is above the value of $35 attracts a standard delivery fee of $3.99 for a scheduled or 2 hour delivery and $5.99 for a 1 hour delivery. Orders under $35 value are charged at $7.99 for a scheduled or 2 hour delivery and $9.99 for a 1 hour delivery.

• Membership Fee (Afrifresh Express) Afrifresh will offer an annual membership by the name ‘Afrifresh Express’ priced at $99. Users having this membership can get free delivery of groceries for full 1 year with few terms and conditions.
• Mark up prices (15%+ more) Some stores selling their products on Afrifresh will offer the same prices as their in-store prices but few stores listed on Afrifresh will have a mark-up of 15%+more from their in-store prices. The revenue from these mark-up prices goes to Afrifresh which helps them pay the shoppers.
• Corporate sponsorship deals with prominent companies for marketing brand visibility on our platform for customers to see each time they access our platform.

We are applying so that we can get help and assistance towards our solution technology which is one of the major barriers either in terms of finance or technical support solution to help us get started and run a full pilot testing on the market. 

Our major requirement is to setup our solution technology from a tech partner that will cost us $10,000. To cut down on branding we will partner with a branding company on revenue sharing model. 

The organisation that I would love to partner with are 

1. Bongohive to get more mentorship and startup training

2. Appstrip a SAIS company that provides on demand software to startup. These will help us towards getting started with the right technology as per our business model.

We are building an online grocery and delivery service connecting customers to supermarkets, farmers and manufacture. We intend to include AI on our platforms that will help predict customer consumer behaviour and also include recipe suggestions based on what the customer's are buying. We will also want to include chatbots on our platform for easy communication with customers in situation where we are offline to help assist customers.