Delivery Hawassa, a startup that delivers foods, drinks, and packages in Hawassa City, is expanding its services to Addis Ababa, launching a courier service that links the southern city with the capital.
The startup that came to life during the COVID outbreak is expanding its service after seeing an untapped market and has already opened an office in Addis Ababa.
“Currently, a lot of people send packages from Hawassa to Addis Ababa and vice versa using cross-country transportation. Drivers are paid around 200 birr to transport the items,” Fiker Assefa, cofounder, and general manager of Hawassa Delivery told Shega.
Fiker further explains that when items are sent in this way, receivers are forced to pick up the package at a time and place set by the driver, which is not convenient.
Charging senders a fixed fee of 300 birr for items weighing less than 10 kg, the startup will deliver packages door-to-door to and from Hawassa and Addis Ababa in 24 hours.
“We will use vehicles to take packages in bulk to the destined city and then deploy motors for the door-to-door delivery,” he added.
Co-founded by Fiker Assefa and Mihretab Medhanite two university graduates in their mid-’20s, Delivery Hawassa has onboarded 48 restaurants and has 10 drivers for its operations in Hawassa.
Hawassa, the capital of the Sidama regional state and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR), is located 275 kilometers from Addis Ababa.
Operating in a relatively smaller city with a size of 157 km2, around one-third of Addis Ababa, has enabled the startup to succeed in door-to-door (D2D) delivery, a shipping method where freight is picked up at the door of the sender and delivered to the recipient’s door.
Delivery Hawassa uses its Android app, together with a call center, to receive orders. The startup is also building a progressive web app for its courier service and is currently receiving orders via phone calls.
There are several courier service providers in the country, with most concentrated in the capital. Ethiopia’s postal operator, EthioPost, also provides parcel services, limiting the weight of a package to 31 kg. Hawassa Delivery also plans to expand to Adama and Dire Dawa soon.
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