Alimentos.pe

In Latin American, consumers want their grocery delivered to their homes, and get fresh vegetables. On the other side, small convenience store owners are treated by the rise of large convenience stores (7-eleven style), and don't profit from digital tools (i.e. sales log)/says cannot afford them.

The typical convenience store owner:

• single location
• sells a bit of everything (vegetables, meat, soda, cleaning products, etc.)
• is not digital native (has a smartphone, and sells via Facebook/WhatsApp/pdf)

Alimentos.pe is a location based online marketplace, where consumers can do their grocery at the shops near them, and the shop owners can sell online. There is always a full functional free tier, and a paid version for an uninterrupted selling experience. We provide trainings to help them catch up with the digitalization trend.

Globally, we empower small stores to sell online their products to nearby customers in a location base system.

In Latin America, there are small independent convenience stores near every home. Selling online currently is not easy neither clear. Some of them sell over WhatsApp (send catalog/receive order list/quote). They say not to be able to afford their own online shop, some others try to sell too mature fruits and vegetables, which sometimes get wasted/produce unsatisfaction on the clients (they have not an accurate idea of their demand, they keep a log of their sales in a handwritten notebook). New convenience stores are taking some of their sales. Some poorer regions/areas are not included at all on digitalization trends.

This is a global problem. The developing world have similarities, Asia might have a similar situation. Extrapolating a bit, this is also a problem of small farm shops in Europe/US, who sales high quality vegetables only on the weekends, but have not a real online presence.

Only in Peru (first market), there are 414,000 of those shops (7 million in Latin America), mostly family run, 60% administrated by women, 68% have only basic education, 58% are migrants, 69% are established at their home. We want to empower them with a tool (online marketplace) and education on selling quality products online.

Our solution is an online marketplace, where people can do their grocery shopping online. After the buyer has enter his location, all the products available at the stores nearby are listed. He/she selects what requires, and at the checkout, our algorithm calculates and distributes the product choice along the stores nearby; always offering the client the best deal (lowest price including delivery) as first option and letting him/her decide for a store based on the ratings/reviews. [we offer convenience, quality, and good deals]

The small shop owner can have almost full control of their business. They choose what to sell (from our large databank of products), manage their prices, do the delivery, directly contact the client if required, and their store name gets visibility. We retain them in our platform by giving them a log of their sales (which products were the most sold and at what price, how much did they sold), through education (giving them advices on how to get the most sales, manage their stores, entrepreneurship, etc.: selected YouTube videos, and a change to build community with other shop owners.

We'll get large companies/distributors (Coca-Cola, Bimbo, etc.) to sell directly to the shop owners for a commission.

Buyers are people up to ~45y, who buys on internet (Facebook, WhatsApp, WebApp, Apps). They want their grocery to be delivered fast and with fresh vegetables. They buy mostly once or twice per week at the small local store due to its convenience. They are currently unsatisfied because not always they find what they are looking for, the vegetables are often too mature. They tend to buy always at the same store.

Small store owners are entrepreneurs with a family run business:

• 60% women administrator
• 68% basic education
• 58% migrants
• 69% established at their home.

They all have a mobile phone and:

• Group 1: are aware of the importance of selling online, but lack the skills and/or tools for doing it, and don't know how/where to start. Can handle the deliveries by themselves.
• Group 2: are aware that some people sells online but think that this is not for them. Fears of the high costs, but most likely has younger relative, who may support them and try it if it is free. They need someone to make the deliveries for them.

We talk to the buyers and sellers while developing the marketplace iteratively identifying their needs and acknowledging their feedback.

In the developing world, we empower small and new business (grocery shop)  to get digitalize. We offer them a tool (marketplace) with ALWAYS a free tier to let them experiment selling online. We enable EVERYONE (all income groups) with a smartphone to use it (buy/sell). First target market are the ones who can handle their deliveries. 

Our retention strategy is though education (tips for helping them increase their efficiency and quality), and building a community to exchange ideas/identify requirements. New delivery man jobs will be created, among others.

We leverage their online presence and help them to increase their revenues.

Profit model: We make our profit from large manufacturers/distributors. We can negotiate with them better prices and keep a commission having a lot of small business using our platform. (In the future: I can imagine even someone buying a coke in our platform and picking it at any store without having to pay. Coke will pay directly to shop owner).

Network: We put together in one place several small stores (they are already small warehouses all around the city).

Process: The code from scratch, so we do not have to pay any commisions on each sale, only basic fix costs (email, cloud server, maps API, etc.)

Product performance: No other website store shows you all the grocery products currently available close by, and let you buy.

Service: We want to assure quality/freshness of products. We need to train/empower the small shop owner.

Channel: We will enable large companies/distributors to increase their efficiency of delivery/sales.

Customer engagement: (In the future: you can buy also your food as subscripton service, or even get them deliver with a amazon prime model).

We have full control of our marketplace since we built it from scratch, and very low costs to pay for external services (only map services, email client, and web hosting, Visa/Mastercard commission is not included/cash pay on delivery is possible).

Our platform is built in Django (Python), which prodives a powerful and easy to develop backend. The website was deployed with Gunicorn & Nginx using SSL encription, in a cloud server, which allow us to focus on our business rathen that upkeeping our own computer/server.

The frontend is developed in HTML5 with Materialize and Bootstrap, which gives us a fast deployment of modern design. We use Javascript with Ajax (responsive) for the connection between frontend and backend, which allows us to avoid save buttons and unneeded same page reloads.

My master studies on Computer Science give us the chance to profit from recommendation systems (future), predict prices and demand (future), determine when and where delivery persons are required.

You can visit our marketplace to see our technology working (https://www.alimentos.pe/). Go to Lima-Peru as your current location to see the stores (at the submission time there are still bugs being solved).

Marketplaces are proven technologies (i.e. amazon.com), and Wabi our competitor (https://www.wabicasa.com/). Cloud server, Python, Django, nginx, gunicorn, HTML5, and Javascript are all well known technologies, and are available for anyone to develop on it (i.e. Spotify, Instagram).

Netflix, Amazon, amon others, have proven that recommendations systems work and increase the sales.

https://aws.amazon.com/personalize/

Uber shows us that market demand forecasting is feasible.

https://eng.uber.com/forecasting-introduction/

Currently, among a long portion of small business owners in the developing world, there is a misconception that selling online is expensive, and there is a gap of knowledge about how to do it and which are the benefits. Some of them do provide delivery services arranged via WhatsApp and Facebook messages, and even phone calls; and get a log of their sales on a handwritten notebook. Thus, they need support on digital transformation of their shops, with a minimum risk entry.

We see a future where every small store owner is selling online. We start in Peru and a requirement is to have an smartphone, which 80% of the adult urban population have. Most of those small stores are in medium to lower income areas and they are spread all over the city. 60% are administrated by women, 68% have only basic education, 58% are migrants, 69% established at their home. Most of them have children, who are digital natives and can support them in the digitalization.

The buyer, on the other side, have between 18-45 years old, and are used to buy through digital channels (Facebook, WhatsApp, App, WebApp). They are unsatisfied with the current service they receive because not always what they are looking for is available, or the products are not fresh (too mature fruits and vegetables).

The main change will happen on the small business owner behavior. They will manage (list) their products online. They will also have a tool, where to see their sales, and trends. A new type of stores will also surge, which are the stores without front shop, basically a small warehouse from where products are delivered.

(activity) Publish their products online -> (output) get online sales -> (short term outcome) sales in a new channel -> (medium term outcome) have a transparent view of sales and prices (basic data analytics) and avoid food waste (predict the right demand for vegetables, fruits and meat products); and growth their business -> increase revenue and efficiency, reduce waste, create new jobs for delivery persons, and new ventures (shops).

We are currently finalizing our full functional prototype, serving 0 people, and we will be the first testing this solution ourselves first. On this first year, we ambition to have at least 200 stores. Over the next five years, we expect to be serving to 100,000 small stores business, all over Latin America. We focus on having a great solution that will be spread from mouth to mouth. We will use the pirate funnel for growth hacking.

We want to support the digitalization of 100,000 small shops in the next five years, while iterating our solution continuously for giving the best service possible, while empowering local entrepreneurs with our solution.

We need to have a great product, which offers the most value to every stakeholder. So, our initial steps are focused on having the best buying and selling experience. We want to have such a great product that it is shared by the buyers.

We need to retain the stakeholders with exit barriers. For the buyer, we want to provide the best product quality/freshness and allow them to get a subscription base shopping experience (aiming later to have something like amazon fresh). On the shop owner side, we want to train them through knowledge and access to our community of shop owners, so they can share their opinions and strategies. 

We need to hear actively the needs of our stakeholders. We need to be aware of their requirements and do the changes when needed so they can have the best experience.

We would like to use growth hacking to expand.

Financial: When we start paying for affiliating new users, we will need resources for paying the ones who affiliate a business (like uber). We think that paying people with a similar cultural background to the small shop owner will help to explain them how to use our service platform.

Technical: We need to protect our database against hacking, since is a core element of our platform. We need to develop a cybersecurity security strategy.

Legal: Business without a front shop are not define in our local legislation.

Cultural: we need to talk to every people group in a way they can understand us from the cultural aspect. Peru and Latin America is a mega diverse country, starting from the Spanish roots mixed with the multiple indigenous groups. We need to reach them all.

Market barriers: some competitors are in the market. We need to expand before them because switching to another platform might be hard. Coca-Cola is already in the race since this year when they acquired WabiCasa.

Limit impact: if we cannot convince buyers and small shop owners to use our platform could be limit our reach. We need to talk to them in a way they can understand us.

We need to get enough money shop oners who choose the uninterrupted sales experience. We need to develop a product that all the stakeholders (buyers, sellers) love, so they start speaking of it, and encourage word to mouth.

We need to focus our attention on cybersecurity, and database managent, as well as backups.

We need to encorage local people to help us in affiliating small shop owners. We will partner with their peers, with a socio-cultural similar background to reach them the best.

We need to move forwand continously, and at a good safe pace, since some competitors with more funding are rising. We must use our best skills, resources, and network.

We need to adapt our speach to who hear us, so we can communicate in a proper way. Our product must be self-explanaitory and intuitive.

None.

1 full-time main developer and CEO:

• Diego Guillen. M.Sc. Computer Science - KTH

1 full-time business developer and COO

• Carola Rosaperez. Former real-state agent with +10y experience.

1 part-time support developer and CTO

• Benghir Tello. M.Sc. Data Science - PUCP

CEO worked is in digital transformation are (industry 4.0) at Bosch (Germany), which gave him a great experience about work culture at the most innovative company in Germany. He holds a master's degree from KTH in Computer Science focused on Artificial Ingeligence and predictive models.

CTO worked at Huawei, Telefonica, and Bank. He has a background on telecommunication systems and cybersecurity.

COO is an female entrepreneur, and +10 years as an independent real-state agent, who has the carisma and empathy required to connect with the shop owners.

No organization. Only personal mentors, and a network of them that our CEO has build over the last years with different ventures.

We provide a free tier for online sales. Every small shop owner can sale for free forever, but with one-month interruptions: i.e. the first month can sell, the second one not, and the third one yes again. For an uninterrupted sale experience, they must pay between 1% (might be adjusted, but always low) of their sales as commission. This money covers just our expansion, and fixed costs.

We let large manufacturers/distributors to sale directly to the small shops (future platform) and we will get a commission on the sales. This will be our profit. The shops get better prices and large manufacturers get access and track their products requirements across several small convenience stores. (Future vision) we see large manufacturers/distributors selling directly to the consumers though our app, using the local stores as independent warehouses, and paying the shop owner directly. The shop owner will focus his attention more on improving the customer experience to get more sales, and great quality/delivery service (he profits always from every sale).

We will be a self-financially sustainable business. We will get revenues from every sale, as commission for single-time sales (in the future subscription will be also an option). Our fix costs are currently low, and we do not need to pay any commission to third parties. 

We are looking for grants for the initial step, since we need to reach as many shops as possible, which may imply rewarding people for affiliating new shops.

We need to offer the best product as possible, so the mouth to mouth word is spread. For that, we plan to get external consultancy on user experience/design of our WebApp.

Capital will be raised when required to expand to other markets, and we will only accept smart money: investment from someone who can help us growth and reach more shops.

General:

The access to the network of experts is extremely valuable, as they will share with us their experience.

Specific:

Having experienced a partnership with MIT and the nine months of support will give us visibility, when competing with companies with enormous resources, such as Coca-Cola (though WabiCasa). We need to reach the most stakeholders (buyers/sellers) as soon as possible and with a great product. Thus, this will contribute to raise awareness of our brand, which is the one step on our growth hack strategy.

Solve's grants will give us some resources that we will use specially in our task to reach small business owners. We will encourage digital native affiliate, with similar socio-cultural background close to the shop owner, to convince the business owner join our platform.

Solve's access to a network of technical experts will help us to identify potential cybersecurity security treats, and potential design improvements (front-end and back-end) for our platform.

Solve's access to a network of business experts will help us to identify new business approaches on discussions with them about key business insights, which they have gather though their years of experience. Other important as well our business strategy could be improved with their own personal network of contacts, and access experts in large manufacturers/distributors.

Access to a network of experts could help us identify social-cultural aspects to consider, when entering such a diverse market as Latin America (Spanish roots mixed with the multiple indigenous groups). We need to reach them all.

We valuate highly to talk to business experts, to get part of their knowledge about digital transformation, and better if they have worked with non-technology natives.

We would like to validate our value proposition with people who has several years of experience is the food/grocery supply chain.

We need to define a growth strategy across country borders and define a rapid expansion in our region.

International regulation for expanding is totally unknown, as well as how to receive funding cross borders (sale shares).

Monitoring, evaluation and advice will help us to keep track on our project.

When to use money for marketing and how will help us not to waste money. We need UX design, to see potential improvements and drawbacks of our current system.

We aim doing partnerships with large food manufacturers who uses innovation as core of their offering and have presence in Latin America, such as Nestlé, Kraft Heinz Co., Kellogs, just to name some of them. We think that estabilishing we want to help them sell directly to consumers, and having one of them on board, could help us to expand globally faster though their global channels, and constantly update us about the real market needs.

Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson could provide us valuable insights on digital economy.

Prof. Thomas Kochan could help us with insights on the labor market and how to handle the new jobs created.

Prof. Zeynep Ton could help us to understand how to satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously.

Mr. Abhay Jere could help us to get an insight on the large indian market.

Mrs. Anna Tunkel and Mrs. Ory Okolloh could help us validating potential funding sources for global expansion.

Our concern is that everyone should be able to sell online. This includes the vulnerable population of Venezuelan refugees across Latin America. In Peru, due to the (terrible) political decisions of government, the president has explicitly discriminated all the Venezuelan population, who came seeking a better future. For the ones, who has no money at all, it will be needed several delivery persons, jobs that usually were taken by the immigrants. For the ones with some savings and who are willing to start a small convenience store with any amount of capital, they can use our platform to sell online and start their own business.

60% of all small grocery stores in Peru are administrated by women, and 68% of all store’s administrators have only basic education. We will empower them with trainings on how to use our tool (our online marketplace) to sell online, and to use basic data analytics to keep track/manage their sales. This will directly increase their revenue by accessing a new sales channel. Our COO is a experienced woman entrepreneur, who will be in close contact with shop owners, understanding their problems and needs, so we can design the most suitable solution.

Also, they will learn to understand some basic data analytics to keep track of their products sales and define prices based on data. Currently, it is not transparent since they usually keep a log on a handwritten notebook. These skills are essential in our new digitalized world.

We empower them to sale online and increase their income potential.

Our concern is that everyone should be able to sell online. This includes digital and non-digital natives, who currently run their small shops without any kind of technology. Though the use of our platform, users will learn how to use our tool and how to start their own convenience store online. 

Also, they will learn to understand some basic data analytics to keep track of their products sales and define prices based on data. Currently, it is not transparent since they usually keep a log on a handwritten notebook. These skills are essential in our new digitalized world.

We empower them to sale online and increase their income potential.

Our concern is that everyone should be able to sell online. This includes digital and non-digital natives, who currently run their small shops without any kind of technology. Though the use of our platform, users will learn how to use our tool and how to start their own convenience store online. 

Also, they will learn to understand some basic data analytics to keep track of their products sales and define prices based on data. Currently, it is not transparent since they usually keep a log on a handwritten notebook. These skills are essential in our new digitalized world.

We empower them to sale online and increase their income potential.

We make available market demand forecast accessible and understandable for every small shop owner, digital and non-digital natives. Though this technology and our algorithm, they will be able to define their prices based on data and not intuition. This reduced food waste directly since currently they buy too much food, and they struggle when the vegetables are getting too mature. We want them to order only what they will sale.

We envision a enormous potential for our marketplace. We are a for-profit organization commited to the goal to digitalize every local store. Our location based marketplace has as entering market the small convenience food stores, with Peru as starting market. By connecting all of them, we could an improved version of 7-Eleven/Oxxo, which helps current entrepreneurs to digitalize and gain online visibility. Our proposal increases the revenue of those entrepreneurs and creates direct jobs for delivery persons. It contributes as well on digital literacy by helping those business owners by incorporating digital solutions. Only in Peru there are over 400,000 small independent convenience stores, and in latin america over 7 millions. Those are family business and they all could benefit from our technology.

Farm shops across the globe have similar difficulties, and also we could help city farmers, or people who grows their products at home and wants to sell them online. This could be an extra revenue for them.

Furthermore, one escalability potential can be also to retail stores in other areas, as tools and building equipment just to mention one ("ferreterías"). Imagine being a company (in some markets), and having the posibility to get the bolts that you forgot to bring delivered fast, or a replacement part for the tool that just broke down.