Startup Convibo delivers with same day Grocery service in London

by Startacus Admin

It was a pleasure meeting Takis Malavetas Co-Founder & CEO of Convibo at our recent startup social in London.

With a tagline of “Grocery delivery from supermarkets to your door in 1 hour” and having launched less than one month ago, we were hungry to find out more about Convibo, the new London grocery delivery service that delivers your grocery order to your doorstep on the same day and even in as little as one hour.

Over to Takis to find out some more…

Convibo - You launched Convibo a couple of weeks ago in London - how have things gone so far?

Since launch it has been great! We already have many happy customers and we are now starting to see repeat orders coming in. London is a great market for Convibo and online groceries is growing massively. Now our main focus is to spread the word about Convibo and reach more households.

How are your targeting your customer and any lessons learned so far?

We are trying many different things - Online and offline. From Adwords to flyers, even referral programs. This is the 3rd launch in a new market for us (previously we were operating a different model) and we’ve learned a lot from those launches. What we found to be important is to test many different channels and as soon as you find the one that picks up, capitalise on it. This is the strategy we had so far and we intend to stick to it.

How do you make sure that your 'shoppers' will keep the quality of the groceries that are delivered high?

We train our Convibo shoppers on how to handle everything. From how to pick a ripe avocado or mango or knowing that pineapples don’t ripen at home. If you order through us, you’ll also get items with the furthest expiration date and delicate items will be packaged safely. We also have our own shopper's mobile app that gives our shoppers all the order info with pictures, detailed descriptions, and even the location of the items in the store. They can mark items as “shopped” and make appropriate replacements for the customer. This helps us to pick the right items and also accelerates the picking process.

In terms of competitors, how do you compare to others in the food delivery market and how can you compete against the big supermarkets?

The grocery delivery market is dominated by the big online grocers (TESCO, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Ocado, Waitrose and Morrisons). But they all operate the same model for over 10 years now. They deliver on the next day and the minimum order restrictions go up to £60 - for many people this doesn’t do the job. Our deliveries come in as little as 1 hour and there are no minimum order restrictions, which makes it attractive for busy professionals and single households. However, we don't want to compete with the supermarkets, but rather work with them. We want to be their solution to offer a better service to their customers. For the supermarkets to change their whole infrastructure and supply chains and launch a 1-hour delivery would be very hard and expensive.

Talk to us about your own background and how did this prepare you for starting a startup!

I always was into entrepreneurship, for as long as I can remember. Also, myself and my two co-founders Gregor and Christian come from entrepreneurial families. If you grow up in such environments, then it somehow becomes the default option to start your own company. In 2012 I decided to do a Masters Degree in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Warwick and became very passionate about startups. Also, this is where I met my two co-founders Gregor and Christian. We decided to write our dissertations on Online Grocery Supply Chains and after 6 months and 60.000+ words of awarded academic analysis, Convibo was born. However, what really toughened us was thoroughly testing our model with real customers. Grocery delivery is a tough business and customer value is generated in the actual stores and on the streets, not in fancy startup offices.

Finally, it’s a busy time for you - give us three people, places or spaces that have helped you out so far on your startup journey to date?

My two co-founders Gregor and Christian, our University and their support and reading every single Paul Graham essay at least three times.

With our previous model we also also got a YC invitation, which was an amazing experience as well.

• #food delivery
• #london
• #grocery
• #convibo
• #london startup
• #grocery delivery service

Published on: 1st May 2016