Gokada, among Nigeria’s most popular last-mile shipment businesshas actually rotated to an asset-light design in the middle of efforts to raise financing, 2 sources near the business informed TechCabal. Oluwaseun Omotosho, the business’s COO, likewise validated the tactical shift– which started in 2022– to TechCabal.
Going asset-light methods that Gokada owns just 10% of the approximated 5,000 bikes on its platform. Motorists are onboarded as partners and are charged a commission for every single order they meet.
Established in 2017, Gokada at first started with a hire-purchase arrangement for chauffeurs. The plan included the business purchasing the motorbikes and charging a day-to-day payment cost spread for approximately 3 years. The strategy was to transform these motorists into partners upon finishing their payments. This technique showed expensive.
Given that Gokada owned the bikes, it handled pricey upkeep expenses that encountered 10s of countless dollars regular monthly in between late 2021 and early 2022.
“We believed to ourselves, what can we do to stop this? If we had actually continued, business would have shut down,” Omotosho stated. The business remodelled the hire-purchase arrangement and passed the upkeep expense to motorists. These choices assisted Gokada grow its earnings in 2022, the business stated.
Gokada will no longer purchase bikes for motorists and will rather link motorists who require bikes to funding business. It will just handle the bikes and manage payment collection.
The business is likewise in talks with financiers to raise financing this year, Omotosho stated, decreasing to supply extra information.
In 2022, Gokada was wanting to offer a rival, Kwik Logistics, however the offer did not go through. In February 2023, TechCabal reported the business was seeking to raise $100,000 through crowdfunding. The business raised $5.3 million in Series A financing in 2019.
Gone through the ‘worst stage’
2020 was a hard year for Gokada. A restriction on two-wheelers in Lagos required the business to pivot from ride-hailing services to the shipment service. It likewise laid off 80% of its labor force. Fahim Saleh, the business’s previous CEO, was likewise killed in his New York house in the exact same year.
In February 2023, Gokada laid off a minimum of 54 workersmentioning extreme macroeconomic conditions. It likewise needed to end up being a leaner operation, decreasing its 2 workplaces into one and renegotiating terms with a few of its suppliers. The COO stated no staff member has actually been released considering that the last layoffs and the personnel count is now around 30.
“We have actually gone through the worst stage. We are not above the water. This survival duration has actually permitted see what requires to be supported and what isn’t needed,” he stated.