PideDirecto, a Mexican hyper-local delivery startup, announced a $5.25 million seed round led by JAM FUND, with the participation of other investors like SOMA Capital and Y Combinator and a group of independent investors from companies like Grubhub and Uber.
PideDirecto’s platform allows local companies in Latin America to sell directly to consumers and deliver orders in less than 30 minutes. As its slogan says –”Don’t give away your earnings” –, the company gets rid of third parties and fees.
The entrepreneurs behind PideDirecto are Hussein Fawzi, Ronni Samir, Anders Steiner and Antonio Nacoud. Prior to launching this company, they developed a corporate wellness program that connected people to local restaurants to order food. During the pandemic, many of their customers worked from home and the delivery orders went from 10% to 80%.
This experience with home delivery services inspired them to create PideDirecto in 2020. Since its launch a year ago, the company has grown by 32% each month, has almost 1,000 customers, and has processed more than 500,000 orders.
How does PideDirecto work?
It is way of making any business able to offer home delivery without third parties like Rappi, UberEats, or DidiFood. PideDirecto creates a business’ own website and deliver its products in less than 30 minutes.
“We build the online storefronts for the brands and operate logistics for businesses, like pharmacies, local retailers, restaurants and CPG brands. Think of us as Shopify with 30-minute deliveries,” told Fawzi, PideDirecto’s CEO and cofounder, to TechCrunch.
Among the other services offered by PideDirecto to its customers are their own website, unlimited orders, and advanced marketing tools. The delivery fees are paid by the consumers.
Investment to scale the business
The investment received will be used by PideDirecto to create a new tech team for the product’s next features. PideDirecto wants to increase its presence nationwide during the rest of 2021 and will seek to expand into Colombia and Costa Rica by the end of 2020.
PideDirecto’s expansion coincides with the growth of other hyper-delivery companies in the region. Two of them are Jokr, a company that operates as a convenience store with deliveries shorter than 15 minutes, and Colombian unicorn Rappi, which is now promising deliveries in 30 minutes or less.
