Sendy is a business I have hugely admired for the past couple of years or so since it pioneered on-demand package delivery services in Kenya a couple of years ago. Meshack Alloys, the CEO of Sendy and his co-founders started the business and immediately received lots of media and market attention as one of the only home grown on-demand mobile apps that is making waves and clearly leads its unique niche.
Sendy is now operational not only in Nairobi but has expanded to Kisumu and Thika as well. In addition, their service goes beyond working with boda boda (motorcycle) riders for package deliveries and they are now doing intercity deliveries with vans and trucks. Their business is clearly expanding beyond its original use case and its growing like a weed. However, it seems Sendy has bigger ambitions in terms what they can do in the on-demand mobile app services space in Kenya.
According to reliable information I received during this weekend, Sendy will be officially launching its on-demand taxi and boda boda services in Nairobi this Friday the 8th July 2016. Indeed, Sendy has already been testing its on-demand taxi services with its existing corporate/business clients to-date and is now finally opening up the same to the consumer market in Kenya. The pricing for Sendy’s on-demand taxi services is as follows:
- Minimum taxi rate for up to 3 KM: Kes. 300.00
- Per KM taxi rate beyond 3 KM: Kes. 70.00
- Minimum boda boda rate for up to 7 KM: Kes. 240.00
- Per KM boda boda rate beyond 7 KM: Kes. 30.00
The reality for Sendy is that even though they are finally getting into the on-demand taxi and boda boda services space, this is a market that is already somewhat saturated with a good number of local and international players as I wrote in a blog post late last week here. In addition, there are others who want to get a piece of the action who have not yet even started. Sendy will need to find a way of differentiating themselves in the marketplace whilst leveraging their existing client base for on-demand package delivery services. That being said, it seemed only logical for Sendy to explore new on-demand business areas in similar ways to what Uber is doing globally since they have the underlying technology and business model in place.
