When it comes to shopping for your household, we all know that certain rules apply – things like super specific kitchen cleaning products and sizes of goods come to play. In my house, for instance, I always pick a certain brand of chevda and I can only clean my kitchen, shower, and washroom with a very specific product.
But online shopping usually has its ups and downs, so does that mean that I shouldn’t shop for my household goods online because of the frustration we face when we shop online? No, it doesn’t, and this is all thanks to SendyGo.
The platform gives shoppers access to an interesting and unique variety of stores that offer everyday household essentials that you can find in supermarkets, fresh produce markets and so much more.
I spoke to Sydney Thiam, VP of SendyGo on this new product, their entry into the market especially during a pandemic, and how SendyGo will revolutionize online shopping for household products by providing convenience, safety, and great variety for their customers.
Kindly tell us who you are, what you do, and how long you’ve held this position.
My name is Sydney Thiam, I’m a strategic planner, an ex-founder, and a marketing executive. I joined Sendy as VP of marketing in mid-2019 and since July 2020, I’ve been VP of SendyGo which is Sendy’s new household and groceries app. Together with the SendyGo team, my job is to drive product development, vendor and customer acquisition, and most importantly, building SendyGo into an app that people love to use because
of the wide variety of household supplies, customer experience, and the overall relationship between vendors and shoppers.
What is SendyGo. Why is it different from other delivery apps?
SendyGo is a household shopping and delivery app. At SendyGo, we essentially want to bring the household shopping experience to the palm of your hand. We want to offer you convenience and variety. We want our customers to be able to browse and buy products from popular supermarkets, fresh produce markets, specialty stores, and retail brands. They can get all their shopping, no matter what it is, and delivered to their doorstep within an hour. So, from everyday essentials like household shopping to cooking gas, water refills, or personal care items, we are working to ensure that customers get these items and more opportunely delivered to them by our shoppers.
SendyGo is built from scratch as a shopping and delivery solution. Everything we do is geared towards improving how customers shop, especially when it comes to optimizing the customers’ journey. This comes down to aspects like product variety, ease of use, and access to product information like price comparison tools, product quality assessment, replacement options, and quick refund policies: all of which are essential in creating value for customers as they shop especially online in this day and age.
How exactly does it work?
Essentially as a customer, once you open the app, you can browse through the categories of your choice whether it’s a retail chain, a supermarket, cooking gas, fresh vegetables, meat products, or any other essential product you need.
Select the category you are interested in and then go through the available products. Add the products or items you want to buy to your cart. Once you are through with selecting your items, you will be able to pay directly through the app on your phone.
Once your order is complete, your shopper on the other side will receive the order request. He/she then picks the items on your behalf. The shopper then requests a rider through the SendyGo Shoppers app.
The platform also allows the shopper to get in touch with you directly if there’s anything worth communicating, for example inquiring for more specifications if necessary, updating you on the status of the order, and giving you feedback on your order. For example, the type of fruits or veggies you ordered aren’t fresh and they would not recommend you purchase them.
Once the shopper is through with picking the items, a professional SendyGo rider that has been trained to handle food arrives picks up the order from the shopper, and delivers your shopping to your doorstep typically 30 minutes after pickup. Now, throughout the entire process, you as the customer can track the order’s location that is if it’s still with the shopper or on transit with the rider.
Speaking of personal shoppers, what exactly is this and why did you decide to go in this direction?
The personal shoppers are your eyes on the ground.
When it comes to shopping virtually, so many things come into play to make it a smooth experience for the customer. What is currently there is inconvenient, unreliable, and oftentimes time-consuming. Most of the time it, unfortunately, requires the customer to physically go to the store to search for missing items or complain about the quality of goods they got earlier.
We want to improve the online shopping experience while still delivering within customers’ expectations. With the professional personal shoppers, they get to hand-select shopping to your exact specifications. They tell you exactly what they find in the store according to your order and if the product doesn’t seem satisfactory, they also let you know before paying for the shopping.
Your current area of focus covers a significant area in Nairobi, do you plan on expanding to areas outside the metropolitan area?
Absolutely. SendyGo was founded with a mission to reach and empower local communities no matter where SendyGo operates which is a very scalable goal, one of the objectives at SendyGo is to enable any type of retail business or independent merchant to reach new customers within the community they serve.
What are some of the Covid-19 preventative measures your riders and personal shoppers are taking especially when it comes to the handling of food?
We have taken far-reaching steps with the sole aim to protect all SendyGo stakeholders. Within SendyGo, we created a task force to monitor the evolving situation and to set up business continuity plans because, despite the pandemic restricting people from moving, household goods and food had to. So throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have equipped our couriers and transporters with hand sanitizers and PPEs.
We also changed how we handle our packages. First, through our partner centers where our team collects PPEs, hand sanitizers, and where we have educational content on how to handle packages safely.
There are other numerous measures that we’ve taken that include contact tracing that apply to our shoppers, riders, and customers. Some of these are:
- Replacing cash on delivery to M-PESA on delivery,
- Thorough equipment, and vehicle cleaning and sanitization, and
- Temperature checks at every touchpoint our partners report to one of our offices and centers across town.
The main aim is to protect our riders and customers.
Why did you decide on the current list of vendors you have on the app?
Well, the first reason was variety, offering choice to our customers. Secondly, offering quality products and services that are within our target customers’ price range.
SendyGo was built to be a democratic solution for the market and take care of the needs of the majority.
We source information primarily from the platform through our existing customers, by
asking them which vendors they would like to see on the platform. In doing so, we are giving our consumers a variety of vendors to choose from while keeping in mind future customers.
What has been the experience so far since launching the app?
We have experienced steady traction and an increase in the number of daily users, getting a lot of updates from our customers and vendors which is in turn leading to continuous upgrades on the app. We are also upgrading the app with several vendors across a variety of categories. These categories include everyday essentials, the fresh goods market, meat and poultry products, drinks, cooking gas, gifts, and stationery.
Also, we have a problem with the number of personal shoppers we currently have. We are
therefore keen on growing our team to ensure that we keep and maintain our target and promise of delivering items within an hour of order placement.
Don’t you feel you’re getting into an “already saturated” market?
Actually, we don’t. Looking at the market, what we see are solutions that prioritize restaurants and the fast-food space as their key pillar. Therefore, many of those platforms treat household shopping and grocery delivery as add-on services. SendyGo focuses primarily on household shopping and grocery delivery. Our key purpose is to
properly understand and master online shopping for household goods and groceries and to be one of the leading, if not the top online retail vendor in Kenya.
What does the future look like for the online delivery and e-commerce business?
The future is quite promising. What I expect to see is more vendors and retailers building their e-commerce platforms and partnering with central aggregating platforms like SendyGo. Leaving e-commerce activities for instance customer acquisition, order management, payment collection, and order fulfillment to the aggregating platforms. Others will steer to the same route as SendyGo.
All these three routes are promising and if you feel like you don’t have experience in running an e-commerce platform or struggle to manage your business online, there are solutions like SendyGo whose personnel are qualified to handle everything to do with online retail. This includes marketing and customer acquisition, order collection, payment processing, and managing inventory updates.
SendyGo will provide not just convenience, safety, and a wide variety of choices for its customers but also quite the exposure of the local traders of the app to a new audience of shoppers who want to experience more especially as the holiday season quickly approaches/
To experience the app, download it on Google Playstore here
