Metro Africa Xpress (or MAX for short) was announced as the Runner-Up in the just concluded TechCrunch Disrupt London 2015.
Founded by Adetayo Bamiduro and Chinedu Azodoh, Max is a last-mile delivery service for urban Africa, giving merchants a way to have their goods delivered to customers within three hours of the order being placed.
The platform uses an API that hooks into text messaging and other ordering platforms, with pricing based on distance instead of weight. Moreover, around 70 percent of MAX couriers are full-time employees on branded motorcycles, with extra, crowd-sourced couriers who are paid per delivery.
The Lagos based last mile delivery service was beaten by the winner of the competition, Jukedeck. Jukedeck lets you create your own unique tracks to use in your videos, games, or anything else you’re making using artificial intelligence music composition technology.
At the very beginning, 15 greatest companies from Europe and beyond were selected to compete in our incredibly competitive startup competition — the Startup Battlefield. They all presented in front of multiple groups of industry leaders serving as judges. The startups were competing for £30,000 and the highly coveted Disrupt Cup.
After hours of deliberations by the TechCrunch editors perusing the judges’ notes, the list was narrowed down to four finalists: artificial intelligence music composition technology Jukedeck, freelancer managing platform Lystable, last-mile delivery service for urban Africa MAX and product marketing monitoring service for retail stores Yoobic.
Azodoh said one of the reasons they built in Africa was to help encourage others on the continent to start companies.
“When you look at the landscape, there weren’t many successful companies that were African-owned, it made it difficult for younger people to look up,” Azodoh said. “Cities in Africa have some of the highest urbanization rates compared across the world. With more and more coming into the system, it’s very important we have things that you can look up to, and say hey, if MAX has done it, I can do it.”
Here is a video of their pitch at Disrupt event
