LNME
INTERVIEW
really to build a technology platform with enough capacity in the market to match demand and supply. We started the platform to make it easy to move goods. Initially, we started small - moving goods between towns and cities, and then between countries in the Middle East. Technology takes centre stage of our business as eCommerce is tech driven. So, we had to create a player that spoke the same language and the same culture. Shipa Delivery is a vision of this digital reality that makes it easy to move stuff with just three clicks and is user-friendly, quick, and simple. The idea is to try and do something similar to eCommerce for the physical part of what’s behind the digital part of the business. Basically, we created all these tools and interfaces to make it easy for merchants to get onboarded on the platform, upload their orders, and off they go into our network. On the other side of the platform, we have the consumer who wants flexibility and visibility on what’s happening with their goods. We give both the parties all of that directly on this platform.
SOLUTION ORIENTED We sit down with Borhene Ben Mena, CEO Shipa Delivery, to talk about the challenges in the market, the solutions and how technology is an integral part of logistics Tell us about Shipa and your journey with Agility. Shipa helps businesses, startups, and consumers manage their supply chain online. Our story begins in 2015, when we were investing in start-ups across the globe. We were looking into companies related to logistics and eCommerce. As we dug deeper, we kept hearing how eCommerce was stable but the logistics behind it, especially delivery, was a major issue. 28 | LOGISTICS NEWS ME | MARCH 2022
While there have been traditional players in the market, the region battles with ePayments. Customers have preferred cash on delivery and international players didn’t want to play in that game. We were left with just one or two companies and that didn’t offer much flexibility to eCommerce platforms. The industry was in a dire need for new players in the market and that’s when we launched Shipa. The genesis was to
What makes your offering a unique proposition in the market? The differentiator is the delivery of our service. It really goes down to performance and experience. If do a parallel with eCommerce, what makes an eCommerce business successful? It’s usually that front-end experience, and the back-end execution. It’s not that different in our industry, we give our merchants that front-end experience with a dashboard that displays all the information and the experience which is the execution behind it. We take ownership of the delivery process and ensure our clients’ customers are satisfied with the service provides. For last mile deliveries we have a hybrid model where we have capacity committed to us and for additional capacity, especially during peak periods, we get it from the market. This ensures we never under-deliver while still staying profitable. In the past five years how much has the last mile sector evolved? A lot has changed. When we began our business five years back the norm was to deliver products in two to three days. WWW.CBNME.COM
