South Africa: Makro buys last mile delivery startup WumDrop (Source:)
On Tuesday 21 November, Makro, a cash and carry chain store in South Africa, announced that it has acquired a majority stake in South African last mile delivery startup WumDrop. The company believes that the move will allow it to speed up delivery of orders to customers.
WumDrop is available in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Durban. The service allows users to request the pickup and dropoff of packages via their phones, allowing for a new and convenient way to receive deliveries.
With the acquisition of WumDrop, Makro will now be able to drastically reduce the time it takes for customers to receive their delivery. The window between customer order placement and delivery will be cut from three days to three hours for customers located within 20 kilometres of a Makro store.
WumDrop said the deal will also cement its ability to offer lower and simpler, flat prices across the board, the benefit of which will be passed on to new and existing WumDrop customers, which include The Foschini Group, BOTTLES, Standard Bank, and Zando.
Makro has already rolled WumDrop out to 16 stores in Durban, Cape Town, Pretoria, and Johannesburg, and says the initial results are pleasing.
“WumDrop just works. Their tech is extremely flexible and solid, allowing integration with any retailer big or small, and after extensive testing it was apparent to us that their solution provided the kind of transparency, speed and flexibility for our customers that we just couldn’t say no to,” said Dean Bauer, Makro supply chain director.
“We are incredibly excited to work so closely with a business like Makro, which backs our mission to eradicate the anxiety one normally experiences while waiting for a delivery; that your delivery guy might or might not get to you at some point in the giant window between 9am and 5pm,” WumDrop founder Simon Hartley said.
Edited by Dean Workman
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