Contxto – As if it were a modern Crusade, Latin America’s logistic giants are competing for Colombia as a kind of delivery Holy Land.
Delivery Hero—the world’s largest delivery company—is now entering Colombia. The deliveries giant is in possession of startups such as Foodfly, Mjam, Foodonclick, as well as Latam’s PedidosYa and Domicilios.com
On the other hand, the Chilean scaleup Cornershop is also looking to the Andean nation with ambition in its eyes. The company was recently acquired by Uber—Silicon Valley’s mobility giant—at an estimated valuation of US$750 million.
Betting against itself?
Although Domicilios.com started serving a small and local market with nothing but phone numbers and menus, it has now expanded to nine Latin American countries. Observing how Rappi—the SoftBank-backed scaleup—escalated aggressively and took away some of its precious market share, the company is now designing strategies to get it back.
In fact, the company aims to become the number one brand for last-mile delivery in Colombia. “We have to get there, period,” said Felipe Ossa, general manager of the company. “Colombia is a very strategic market for its geographical position and because it’s where one of our main competitor’s headquarters are based.
According to the executive, Domicilios, which currently hoards over 15 percent of the industry in the region, believes it can outgrow its competitors by reducing average delivery time from 30 to 20 minutes.
Domicilios.com is well known for being the highest bidder when it comes to deliverers’ rates.
Interestingly enough, Delivery Hero also invested US$105 million in Rappi back in 2018. This could imply that either:
1) the holding exited its position in Rappi in subsequent funding rounds, or
2) Mom just loves her older son a lot more.
Either way, we’re finding out more about this case. You’ll know sooner than anyone else.
Cornering the shop
Following the bad, turned-good news for Cornershop, the company is hungrier than ever. According to El Mercurio newspaper, the founders recently opened some job listings on LinkedIn looking for an Operations Manager and a Customer Relationships Manager in Bogotá.
This revelation makes sense considering one of the co-founders, Juan Pablo Cuevas, announced to Mexican media that they would be “expecting to launch in two or three countries during the next six months.” According to La Tercera, the second in line is not Argentina, but Brazil.
The battle over last-mile delivery is getting fierce in Latin America. And although I tend to criticize how often this is said about time after time, it seems as if we can’t stop talking about it.
Time (and execution) will tell how this unfolds.
-VC
