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Delivery app ‘WumDrop’ launches in Joburg

Johannesburg - A business that started off delivering baby diapers, but which evolved into an online service providing on-demand deliveries of any kind in Cape Town, has expanded to Johannesburg.

WumDrop’, which was formed in May this year in Cape Town, launched a Johannesburg operation on Monday, bringing its Uber-like experience to South Africa’s economic powerhouse.

WumDrop’s online service and Android app are similar to popular ride-sharing service Uber when it comes to functionality. Users of the service type in their pick-up address, sender name, and contact details and then repeat for the drop off details. Additional instructions can also be entered to ensure a proper delivery.

After accepting the quote, the delivery is then dispatched to a WumDrop driver. WumDrop drivers - who apply via strict criteria such as undergoing criminal checks - then earn 70% of the delivery fee while WumDrop takes a 30% cut.

WumDrop charges R7 per kilometre, with a minimum fare of R35 in Cape Town. And the service’s delivery people range from cyclists, scooter drivers and even just walkers for short distances.

"It's an on-demand courier service that doesn't make you want to shoot yourself in the face, which is what a lot of them do,” WumDrop co-founder Simon Hartley told Fin24.

"With a normal courier service you have to sign up with an account, you have to pre-buy a lot packages, you have to fax things to them, you have to give them the name of your first-born child,” Hartley said as he highlighted WumDrop’s differentiating factor of being instant and simple.

WumDrop has 25 drivers in Cape Town with 15 on the road at anytime, according to Hartley. After launching in Joburg on Monday, the service has ten drivers in the city with five on the road at any time, Hartley told Fin24.

WumDrop has also kick-started a programme with an investment arm called Ke Ya Rona to help drivers rent-to-own vehicles. The move is intended to help drivers eventually manage their own fleet.

The WumDrop team.
Pictured: Members of the WumDrop team dressed in their signature outfits. (WumDrop)

Pivoting from 'WumWum' to 'WumDrop'

WumDrop’s origins are completely different from what it is doing today.

"We had a diaper subscription service called WumWum and the delivery was really letting us down. It was really terrible from a bunch of different suppliers,” Hartley told Fin24.

"We took matters into our own hands and we wanted to buy our own vehicles but we couldn't afford it and we realised that if we did buy a vehicle and the vehicle got written off then we're totally screwed,” he said.

Subsequently, the WumDrop co-founders, which also includes Roy Borole, decided to pivot their nappy delivery business to an Uber-type model.

But the team then decided to expand the service even further.

"It took us ten seconds to realise that if we're doing that for nappy deliveries then we should actually just sort of white label the service for a bunch of other products, and not just keep it to our nappies,” Hartley told Fin24.

Competition, though, is tight in the delivery space in South Africa.

Last month, Fin24 reported on a the launch of a local courier comparison site to offer dubbed ‘CourierScout.co.za’, which compares prices from the likes of Aramex, Fastway and CourierIT. However, Hartley told Fin24 that WumDrop is in discussions with the likes of Aramex regarding partnerships.

Already, WumDrop drops off packages to Aramex touch-points for those customers looking to deliver projects between cities or towns in South Africa.

‘On-demand’ tech firms flourish

Demand for instant online services is growing rapidly across the globe with ride-sharing start-up Uber lighting the way.

This month, Uber said that its value has doubled in the last six months to $40bn.

This was after Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick announced a latest funding round in a blog post. The additional funding is expected to help it grow the company’s Asia-Pacific region.

"It was just a year ago that Uber was operating in 60 cities and 21 countries - today we are in over 250 cities in 50 countries," Kalanick wrote.

"We are six times bigger today than 12 months ago - and grew faster this year than last. This progress is remarkable, but it is in the coming years that Uber truly scales and the impact in cities becomes visible."

* Follow @GarethvanZyl on Twitter. For more tech news, follow Fin24tech @Fin24_Tech.

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