Predicting potential winners of Nigeria’s emerging food delivery war

This article was contributed to TechCabal by Uche Aniche, co-founder of SSE Angel Network.

In this post, I tried to predict the potential winners of Nigeria’s emerging food logistics space. I also lightly broached the conversation around Nigeria’s correct market sizing. 

Recently, Bolt, the Estonian ride-hailing company, announced it would be shutting down their food delivery operations in Nigeria. Some ecosystem leaders felt they were displaced by Chowdeck—a YC-backed startup in the space—founded by Femi Aluko a Paystack alumnus. I, on the other hand, thought it was the result of Nigeria’s recent economic challenges. Nigeria is currently grappling with the twin issues of acute currency depreciation and rising inflation. The ride-hailing space (where Bolt leads and mostly uses petrol-powered cars) has taken a big hit in the wake of the subsidy removal policy, which has led to high pump prices. 

Most of the food delivery services use petrol-powered motorbikes and bicycles. Glovo, Gokada (founded by the late Fahim Saleh) ACE Logistics and of course Chowdeck to mention just a few. 

I became aware of Chowdeck just before #StartupSouth8 (our annual conference) because they announced the launch of their operations in Port Harcourt on X (formerly Twitter). Subsequently, I started seeing their riders around the city and became interested in learning more about the company. I saw and read a series of Medium posts by Femi Aluko, the company’s founder. I found the thoughts interesting and even teased him on X. On my recent trip to Lagos for Zoholics (where we held a press conference to announce our community’s partnership with Zoho for Startups), I wanted something different from hotel food and it was a perfect opportunity to try Chowdeck’s service. I shared my experience in a post on X if you’d like to know how it was.