I've used Rappi here in Mexico and it's probably one of the worst delivery services I've used. Just seems like they overextended themselves by going in multiple directions without being quite efficient at them. Their website also often shows promotions that suddenly disappear when you try to click on the specific restaurant and you then have to plead your case to the customer support representative. Overall not a very good experience. Their delivery people often make mistakes with items too.
In Colombia, A LOT of the guys who work delivering in rappi are Venezuelan people with no documents, they ride mostly bikes with no helmets or protections at all ! And they are not social covered at all: no health or professional risks, no vacations, etc etc etc ... That's the worst way to do business, taking into consideration we are working hard (on Latin America) on formalizing our employees.
The competition is fierce, here in Montevideo (Uruguay) it's unbelievable the amount of delivery startups for a population of less than 2 million...<p>We have the local PedidosYa (sold to DeliveryHero), U.S. UberEats which is making a heavy bid, Rappi as well, some other local challengers...<p>I love the services but some are too predatory (PedidosYa takes about 20% of a delivery unless the restaurant has high volume).
I'm always a little suspicious of the reality of unicorns.<p>The way that the figure is derived is that people paid $X for portion Y of the company, and therefore the company is worth $X/Y. The problem is that in addition to portion Y, in a large deal the investors also get preferred stock, downside protections, and so on. Those extras are worth something, and therefore some of $Y is for THAT rather than a share in the company.<p>Therefore the company is always worth less than the figure you see reported.<p>See <a href="https://www.fenwick.com/FenwickDocuments/The-Terms-Behind-The-Unicorn-Valuations.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.fenwick.com/FenwickDocuments/The-Terms-Behind-Th...</a> for more on this.
Anecdote from this past Tuesday, for what it's worth: At a Starbucks in Buenos Aires, Rappi was set up at the table next to ours, doing interviews to hire delivery people.<p>A friend who uses these services more than me said he likes Rappi because you can see in real-time where your delivery is.
Here is a video of one of the founders yelling at their carriers <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ooTmdOyKYpQ" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ooTmdOyKYpQ</a>
Congratulations to Rappi, it’s crazy dificult to raise money in Latin America. I’ve seen so many good teams/products/services fade away due to inability to raise capital.
I remember when Pathao, a delivery service from my home country was valued at 100M, I thought it was a lot of money. Having spoken to the people who work there, they told me that the margins are slim, so I'm guessing that you basically make money on volume of deliveries.
Rappi is so heavily price subsidized that I wonder what will happen with them once they stop burning through VC. For perspective, the average delivery fee in Buenos Aires is < $1, and they guarantee < 35min deliveries or your money back.
Is there any other succinct way of describing "privately owned companies valued at over $1B" besides as "unicorns"? The animal type of unicorn is <i>awesome</i>, and I feel actual unicorns ought to be protected from capitalism (and probably from humans in general). Using the word in a business context seriously detracts from how magical unicorns actually are.