hugo was recently acquired by pedidosYa / delivery hero. they rolled up all the operations into a single app (pedidosYa) and absorbed a part of the hugo team. this move will allow pedidosYa to consolidate the market.
it would be weird and inefficient for pedidosYa to maintain a separate app (hugo's) w/ an entirely different codebase.
Thanks - these are good points you bring up. A few considerations to complement your thoughts:
- Banking systems are indeed different. That's why we've decided to raise the capital ourselves. It allows us to set and follow our own risk assessment and not be subject to onerous regulations. Granted, raising capital is not simple either, but doing so allows us to focus more on providing a smoother, more integrated experience with the platforms in the near term.
- What we've found is that a ton of small business owners operate as the equivalent of a sole proprietorship. What's interesting is that many small businesses actually have a bank account. What they don't have access to are financial resources, such as working capital. These underbanked businesses are the core segment we are targeting right now. As you noted, there are even more informal businesses, but they don't often sell through the platforms we partner with.
- We have lawyers in each country to make sure we've set things up well and comply with local laws. It's a pain, but we view this as an important fixed cost that makes it more difficult for others to replicate down the line.
- Agree on your comments about the status quo and not to underestimate their power. We've met resistance before and foresee this happening again if we scale. Can't really add much else except that we've grown up in countries where this is the norm.
- With our first customers, we've noticed that it's critical to build trust upfront. Some of our best customers to date are small grocery stores and cornershops where 90%+ of transactions are still done in cash. The pandemic has accelerated their adoption of digital payments - in fact, electronic transactions doubled across the region last year. We believe this is a good time to try out a new approach!
Got it, very cool. Of course I assume you can also easily create a little card reader for smaller shops/physical stores so you can also track those sales and do loans based on that too!
it's possible! though what we've noticed is that there are a ton of these card readers popping up in countries like Mexico. They've got the distribution down, and have done a lot of the legwork in finding these small businesses. we really focus on understanding the risk to give them access to financial resources often unavailable to them
it would be weird and inefficient for pedidosYa to maintain a separate app (hugo's) w/ an entirely different codebase.