Start-up Society #84: OjaExpress
Keeping the American Dream Alive
Welcome to the 84th edition of Start-up Society! This blog highlights some of the most exciting start-ups in the country striving to keep the American Dream alive.
Make sure you check out the previous issue, if you have not already, here.
This week, we are doing a podcast and summary article double feature for our new installment of Meet the Entrepreneur featuring Boyede Sobitan, CEO at OjaExpress.
For the full conversation, tap into the podcast here!
Background
Boyede is a child of Nigerian immigrants who grew up in Chicago. Boyede ended up starting his career as an ICU nurse and earned his M.A. and worked all over healthcare except Pharma and Insurance. He noticed over the course of his career how difficult it is for immigrant communities to obtain their cultural groceries. The issue is that there is a limited market of cultural grocery stores and there isn't enough access between the supply and demand. He realized that there were no delivery services targetting cultural grocery stores. Once Boyede saw the lack of solutions around this problem he created OjaExpress with Fola Dada, Co-Founder & CTO.
The fact that this is a double-sided marketplace means that the store owners get more inbound from the OjaExpress and the consumer gets easier access to the cultural grocery stores that are so essential for immigrant communities.
Adoption & Delivery Logistics
Adoption has been up and down. COVID impacted our business because the store owners were impacted. COVID disproportionately impacts immigrant communities and as a result of that, we saw a shortage of staff in the grocery stores that we work with. Many of them underwent hardships during this time. There are a lot of success stories that we see. Conversations typically go best with the next generation of store owners who are more open-minded about integrating into applications like OjaExpress.
The company also partners with DoorDash for deliveries and they bring the store owners into the delivery space. The company is following an asset-light model that encourages stores to own their delivery and inventory of the grocery while the company brings the technology framework AKA the Secret Sauce.
Co-Founding OjaExpress & Techstars Kansas City
Boyede’s co-founder, Fola, is a digital nomad and has lived all over the U.S. He was also a Nigerian immigrant and the duo were both intimately familiar with the issue. Their commitment to building the company has resulted in a “Ying and Yang” relationship. Together they can bring cultural groceries as a real utility in American society.
2020 is when OjaExpress got real, as the company was accepted into the Techstars Kansas City accelerator. Shout out to Lesa Mitchell, General Manager of Techstars. The program helped motivate and bring the company to the next level. The cohort was also a really big value add. Belief + Check (investment) is a powerful combo.
What is next?
Inventory Management is sh*tty across the board, from small stores to Walmart, which OjaExpress can alleviate. Making the grocery stores smarter. This idea is mainly around unlocking data points that can be utilized by the store owners. Record management, supplier distributor communication are two examples of these issues. Venita is a new feature we are launching that connects the supplier and distributor to a data dashboard displaying the inventory of the store. Flexible labor and being able to keep the store running even when staff is reduced due to issues like the pandemic is enabled by connecting the grocer to technology.
Revenue Model
Immigrant and cultural grocery stores actually have higher margins than normal because they have leverage due to imports and specific target markets. OjaExpress charges grocers a $99/mo. flat fee to be listed on its platform. The company also charges a service fee and has a transaction fee model for transactions processed on the platform. Immigrants are very price sensitive and this model has emerged after working with a lot of Gen X & Baby Boomer store owners.
Fundraise & Ethos
OjaExpress is looking to raise another round in Q2 to expand to other cities such as Houston, Detroit, and Indianapolis. These areas have a high concentration of immigrant communities. We are betting on the growth of these cities and pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an American. You can be 100% Persian and 100% American at the same time.
Thank you for reading this article! Feel free to leave a comment, clap, and follow. Stay tuned for our next write-up, posted every week.
Authors: Arteen Zahiri & Rumeer Keshwani
