Meet Viero
Viero is a SaaS platform for food and grocery deliveries that can be customised to be single-store or multi-store. The platform is built for restaurants, grocery stores, food trucks, cloud kitchens, and delivery businesses in mind.
MEET THE FOUNDERS
Basheer Phiri is the CEO and Lead Tech of Viero, and a 3rd Year Accounting Student at the University of Cape Town. Hopewell Fakude is the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Viero, and a 2nd Year Management Studies at University Cape Town.
Both Basheer and Hopewell have prior experience running a food delivery startup as they built and launched a food delivery startup called Zistify in 2019 at the University of Cape Town. They noticed that students and staff spent a lot of time waiting in long queues to order their food, and there was no available delivery solution on campus. After having spoken to many frustrated students and staff on campus, Zistify was born.
Their experience with Zistify gave them a lot of insights into the in’s and out’s of running a food delivery business, and this experience (including the mistakes they made along the way) helped shape them into who they are today.
With COVID-19, these young entrepreneurs have helped restaurants survive the pandemic, and bring food deliveries to informal communities while also creating jobs for drivers.
Basheer & Hopewell
THE PROBLEM BEING SOLVED
Food delivery services such as Uber Eats are only available in large and established cities, and many smaller cities, suburbs and informal areas do not have any food delivery services available. Entrepreneurs in these areas who want to launch food delivery businesses find it difficult and expensive to do so because food delivery technology is expensive to build. As a result, customers in these areas still cannot order food online.
Customers in less urban areas spend up to R40+ on transport to the shopping centre to buy groceries because no grocery delivery businesses operate in these areas either. With Viero, our technology can be used by entrepreneurs to launch grocery delivery businesses and help customers save on transport costs while receiving a convenient service.
THE IMPORTANCE OF WHY THE PROBLEM NEEDS TO BE SOLVED
If this problem is not solved, customers will still spend a lot of money on transport to buy food and groceries, and only travel to restaurants and stores in close proximity to buy food. Restaurants can only sell food to customers in a small geographical region and entrepreneurs who want to solve this problem will find it very difficult to build the technology.
OPPORTUNITIES COVID-19 PROVIDED
Many restaurants have been under pressure to find alternative means of selling food to their customers as most customers were reluctant to travel to restaurants. Furthermore, many customers were looking for ways to order food online but could not do so. Local entrepreneurs noticed this problem and looked to Viero to provide the technology they needed to launch a food or grocery delivery business. The pandemic added relevance and urgency to our solution and highlighted the problem we are trying to solve to a much higher degree.
Personally, the lockdown has helped us accelerate our technology adaption and has proven the possibility of remote work. We worked on Viero remotely for the first 6 months and were able to remain productive. The pandemic also accelerated online networking, especially across geographies. We were able to easily meet, connect and learn from amazing individuals all over the world.
ASPIRATIONS FOR INCUBATION PERIOD AT FSAT LABS
The FSAT Labs has supported multiple startups such as Kudoti, AirStudent, and Kweza Technologies and this support has led to major impact and disruption on the African continent. We would benefit from this network of founders who share our passion and belief that Africa's potential is high, and needs innovative solutions together with visionaries like you, at FSAT Labs who believe in us. In the coming months, we hope to test and validate our assumptions, optimize our product and service offering, and succeed in helping our customers to launch 10 food or grocery delivery businesses. We hope to help facilitate a minimum of 5 000 daily orders across all 10 delivery businesses.
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