Today, anyone can start an online business in Africa and start selling almost instantly to anyone within and outside the continent, thanks to payment infrastructures companies like Paystack, Flutterwave, Mpesa and more. This is huge considering where we used to be, however payment is just one part of commerce, the ability to get items delivered cheaply, securely and rapidly within an outside Africa is another. Delivery is currently very poor.
To paint a picture of what’s going on; While the rest of the world is focusing on reaching its consumer faster, African businesses are trying to crack last-mile delivery, reduce logistics costs and effectively manage the chains of logistics services they currently use to make products available to consumers. It’s so bad that businesses rely on up to 5 carriers and unregistered buses/motorcycles to move goods to consumers. Plenty of items are not only damaged on transit but also lost.
In contrast, a merchant in the US can rely on services like Shippo, Shipstation, ShipBob and more to efficiently manage all their carriers, get discounted shipping prices from carriers and automate their shipping processes all in one place. They are able to focus on growing their business.
This is why we started Shiip is a multi carrier delivery startup that helps take care of any business delivery and waybill needs while they have more time to handle business and serve their customers better.
How we started Shiip
As founders, our lives have been leading up to building Shiip. Shiip evolved from our eCommerce product https://listbuy.shop (a one-stop-shop for African merchants to run online businesses). It was initially a feature of Listbuy but it became a top-selling part of the product.
Our customers wanted to use our shipping option outside of the app because of the incredibly discounted prices they get and to ease the dispatch and fulfilment of their shipments. So fourteen months ago, we obliged them by running an experiment and it took off like crazy. Within eight weeks of experimenting, we did over five thousand dollars in revenue and received great reviews.
In January 2021, we shifted our focus to work on Shiip full-time because of the potential it promises. The problem was obvious, customers were waiting, the market was huge, we understood how to solve the problem and we did. It’s been incredible ever since.
The obvious gap in the market strengthened our conviction to start building the Shiip.
How Shiip works
The Shiip platform helps eCommerce businesses manage their delivery operations ten times better. It pulls business orders into a dashboard or API and displays different shipment options with their corresponding rates and estimated delivery time. Customers can sort through by cost and time to choose the best service.
Anyone in Nigeria can using Shiip, it’s available on Web, Mobile App, WhatsApp Bot, WordPress plugin, API and more. Our users rely on our route optimisation, price comparison and courier review to decide the best carrier to choose to delivery their items. Our technology is giving merchants a wide range of delivery options that will make it “incredibly easy for them to deliver cargo internationally and locally”
Shiip has Onboarded 51 carriers including notable names like DHL, FedEx/Redstar, GIG, Kwik, UPS, Jumia Logistics, Kxpress, Courier Plus and more, covering local, national and international shipments. In the past 15 months, we have crossed 10,000 items shipped and over 2000 users.
We currently boast of client list like Custruct, Brandbox, Mavins Record, Pepperest, SofreshNG, Flutterwave, Bumpa e.t.c all with a customer/merchant base of over 100,000 users.
Shiip is growing rapidly and are we are intentional about growth, our goal is to continue to work on onboarding new merchants as well as our expansion into other African countries.
