Zakaz.ua - Ukrainian delivery service known in the world

Zakaz.ua is a Ukrainian food delivery service, which was working in Ukraine, Moldova, and Uzbekistan. Zakaz.ua has its specialization in food and grocery delivery service in 15 Ukrainian cities and hundreds of food markets and shops.

Zakaz.ua was founded in 2010 by Yegor Anchishkin, one of Viewdle's co-founders. In the beginning, Zakaz.ua had the name "Kabanchi.com" but got renamed in 2011.

Startup Zakaz.ua operates in the retail and delivery market. In short, the user is allowed to order goods via the Internet from some large stores that do not have their delivery services or are oriented to legal entities. The difference between a startup is that the products are collected by a person (on the site this position is called a "collector"), who, according to the creators, selects the freshest and highest quality products from the supermarket shelves.

According to Yegor Anchishkin, initially, the project did not solve an obvious problem. There was an understanding of the lack of several technological services in the grocery retail market and that there are big problems in a large area. But no one imagined exactly how these problems could be solved.

The money for the start was taken from the founder's wife, according to him - several thousand dollars. After that, the startup managed to quickly close the "seed" round, attracting angel investments from Alexander Olshansky (Internet Invest). Three years later, funds were raised from the president of Best Business Group, Evgenia Dubinskaya, and in 2014, from Chernovetskyi Investment Group (CIG). According to Anchishkin, they were looking for investments in many investment companies and funds, but the strategic vision coincided with CIG. He also "felt that the CIG investment company is set up for fruitful cooperation."

The funds raised were used for salaries. At the very beginning, the team consisted of four people: Anchishkin himself and three developers who wrote a customer relationship management system (CRM) from scratch. Naturally, from the moment the service was launched, people "in the field" immediately began to be hired: assemblers, operational managers, and couriers.

By the time the last round of investments was raised, the project was able to reach operational zero - they began to earn money on each order. The next priority in Ukraine was to work on quality improvement.

The team managed to work out the right business model from the very beginning, according to Yegor, "which has not changed significantly in six years." After working out the procedures, and collecting and analyzing a large amount of data, it was decided to enter the American market.

The start of entering the American market was not very successful. Yegor admits that a personnel error was made: an incorrect expansion of the operations team and the development team. Highly paid American programmers and managers have not justified themselves. This miscalculation resulted in wasted time and money for investors. This, however, did not lead to the closure of the startup: as they say, they realized it in time.

American CartFresh was launched at the end of 2015. Boston was chosen as the first city in the United States because there the company got into the acceleration program for startups Techstars.

The service worked with the Russos supermarket chain, the delivery cost was $6.99, and the prices of groceries were the same as in the store. The main competitor had a higher price tag - $10. In addition, one had to pay 15% of the supermarket price. Back in CartFresh, they came up with the idea of leaving products in a special box at the customer's door. There they did not have to sit and wait for the courier.

The number of orders grew rapidly, everything seemed to be working well. But then it turned out that we were working in the red. Advertising, salaries, and organization took more than we earned. With each order, our losses only grew.

To bring this business to profitability, millions of investments were needed. In addition, it was difficult to manage it, but it was necessary to hire people, to structure the work. All this requires not only a lot of money but also time.

None of the owners had neither the desire nor the ability to invest so many resources in this business.

On January 27, a representative of Glovo's global office arrived in Kyiv and announced the completion of the deal. It's about the co-founder of the service, Oscar Pierre.
Spanish delivery service Glovo closed a deal to acquire Ukrainian food delivery service Zakaz.ua from supermarkets.

Some investors received cash payments, while others received 20% in cash and 80% in Glovo shares.
The main shareholder of Zakaz.ua, Chernovetskyi Investment Group, according to chose the second option. It is noted that this will allow the company to maximize its profit from investments in Zakaz.ua.