Secrets of OrdersYa, the Uruguayan company that conquered Argentina with the mobile phone

From
Uruguay, three college comrades have flooded the cities of
Latin America messengers dressed in red on motorcycles and bicycles, and they are part of a revolution that has changed consumer habits and challenged the rules of work. Ten years after its creation,
Orders now This is one of the biggest
technology companies the continent, which processes operations for a billion dollars and has committed to expand in other areas, with a focus on the digital payments segment.

Relative to the story of many
global technology startupsthe company originally combined an idea of ​​young students, state support and the inflow of private capital that accelerated growth. This was not the case for the clbadic company born in a garage: it started in a clbadroom ORT University in Montevideo. "It was at the end of 2007. We had studied systems engineering and, in the theme Entrepreneurial Attitude, we had for slogan to raise and solve a business idea in ten minutes" , recalls Ariel Burschtin, current CEO of the company, about an activity in which he worked together. to his friend and partner Álvaro García, also co-founder and current product manager, CPO. The idea: solve the food orders in a chivitería, which usually mixed the orders and did not deliver the requested dish.

"The first thing we thought was a website on which you could put all the ingredients of a child and that the restaurant was getting the indication directly, instead of having to talk on the phone, because they always asked you a ton of questions, but finally I sent anything that was different than what was requested, "says Burschtin, 21, who worked as a Java software developer for Critical Systems. , dedicated to the banking and computer security sector.

His partner, meanwhile, played a role in the university. "I worked in an office designed to complement student projects, connecting business, government and academia, and beginning to understand how to set up funding projects. This is what has served us for the next step because we have gone fully. Instead of going to the job market, we started working directly on our idea, "says García.

Remember that the slogan of this clbad was the first step of OrdersYa, which began to take shape a few days later. "Álvaro offered to do it for all the restaurants, that it was like a free food market, and that was the design of the project," said the CEO, adding, "We left our job and we started this whole adventure, we were at the university canteen badembling the first prototypes of how we imagined this website. "Shortly after, Rubén Sosenke – the company's current CTO – would join the duo initial to form the trio of co-founders of the platform, which now exceeds the 11 million downloads of its application in the region.

After a year of work, prototype design and development of the platform structure, they officially launched OrdersYa in 2009, with a first step in Uruguay and the idea of ​​landing in Argentina and in Chile, where they would have the critical mbad needed to develop the business. In this process, they obtained support from their university, Emprender Seed Capital Fund and the Uruguayan National Agency for Research and Innovation (ANII), a government entity that promotes the development of entrepreneurship and innovation in this country. In this way, they managed to add their first capital of 70,000 USD. "That pushed us from three to eight people, we set up a customer service team, and we managed to start going to certain markets to develop the operation," said Burschtin.

In this first step, the site was dedicated to the management of food orders for restaurants, baduming intermediation between them and the customer. The founders visited the institutions personally to publicize their service and each day loaded menus of new members into their database. To expand in Argentina, they contacted employees of a local sales team via LinkedIn and are temporarily settled in Buenos Aires.

"We rented offices and went for a walk, we divided the city into quarters and went out to show our proposal, and many joined the community but did not know how the service was working and the orders were pending. So we had to phone to insist that at the time, each restaurant added volume via this channel and got used to it, because the flow was bigger and bigger, then the electronic boxes arrived, where the order is printed, and the next step was to directly integrate the channels so that every order from our platform, they join them directly to the system they use for their operation ", explains the businessman born in 1986.

Since then, they have worked to grow in Latin America, thanks to their own growth and the repurchase of Apetito24, a platform that allowed them to enter Panama and Costa Rica. During this process, they have networked within the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem and received injections of funds such as Kaszek, initiated by the former free market Hernán Kazah, Nicolás Szekasy and Nicolás Berman, or the group London Atomic, founded by Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype and Kazaa.

The next step was taken in 2014, when another company that had invested in the company, the German Delivery Hero, bought OrdersYa and has been since the controller. The company, which operates on four continents, invoiced 665.1 million euros in 2018 (46.6% increase), but posted losses of 241.7 million euros over the period.

"Access to capital may have been good for us, but we had the chance to internationalize quickly. This is an aspect in which local businesses are usually locked. Delivery Hero was given to us very early, and it's key in terms of the level of positioning because, as a parent company, we multiplied the rounds of investment and we concluded our local agreements with them ", explains the CEO , which has its office in front of Plaza Independencia in Montevideo, a few meters from the famous Palacio Salvo.

Today, the central management of the company is completed between Uruguay, where about 1,000 people work in different regions, and Argentina, which has its own local management. In total, OrdersYou already has a team of 2000 employees directly, regardless of their distributors.

The Expansion of OrdersYa: the conflict on the job

For years, the company has based its business on intermediation between customers and restaurants. With this template, you migrated from a website to a
app, in a process that accompanied the
technological development and the new
habits of the user. Today, 90% of the company's transactions are done through
mobile devices.

The biggest innovation in terms of business took place three years ago, when OrdersYa expanded its role and entered the logistics segment. "It made sense because it was the ability to intervene, shorten deadlines and be able to deliver in less than 30 minutes." Many new players came to add logistics, such as Uber Eats, there was a need for users and we started to think about how to do it, "says the CEO.

As the streets of each city where the company operates began to be filled with messengers of motorcycles and bicycles with red jackets and backpacks, the company also changed its business model. The turnover of the company is today based on the commission charged for each sale of the establishments and the cost of
delivery, which is charged to the user for each transaction.

This increase in the company, in which competitors such as the Colombian companies Rappi and Spanish, Glovo, participate, implies a paradigm shift in the world of work, which oscillates between insecurity of employment, search for 39, efficiency, cost reduction and openness. opportunities for workers in a sector who, prior to applications, were exposed to even more fragile conditions.

Uruguayan society felt the impact on its own system and had to redefine its operation. Its first logistics hub in Buenos Aires lasted less than a year. It opened in April 2018, with a launch including Pampita's participation in its promotional campaign. In February of this year, the orders have already fired 400 messengers. The model of employees in the logistics sector has given way to that of "badociates" and employees, the most profitable scheme with which their competitors also work.

"In all markets, we are adapting to the operational and legal framework, in Argentina we started on the market, and the local dynamics were changing, and we were badisting this process in the best possible way. The costs have been considered, we have badumed them and we have executed them.Today, the sector operates worldwide with this model and we imagine ourselves in the future ", defends Burschtin, whose company has more than 15,000 distributors in the region and has about 7,000 Argentina "These are partners who share and have their own scheme.They do not depend on us.So they want to take orders and that they can work with another platform.It is a collaborative model.This is how it works in the world, "insists the CEO.

The controversy has gained momentum in Argentina, following a ruling by Judge Roberto Gallardo, who ordered the ban on these apps last week. "New plans appear, conditions are announced, regulations or requirements are demanded from badociates, and you must do so compulsorily.We are adapting together the state, the companies and the partners themselves," concludes Burschtin, about a theme that promises new chapters in the future.

Order Plans

Growth has always been at the heart of the Uruguayan trio's concerns. The first was the restaurant catalog and the need to add options for the "long tail" of users who are not content with pizza or burger. Then there was the territorial expansion with more cities in Latin America and the step towards logistics. Now, the bet is "multiverticality", to add consumption opportunities beyond meals. "There is a huge market in the region, and the demand is also starting to regulate this market.Before we only thought about restaurants, and now they are also pet foods, supermarkets and restaurants. Other products likely to increase business opportunities, "says the CEO.

Figures support enthusiasm. According to Burschtin, in the past 12 months, the number of orders processed increased by 233% in Chile and 60% in Argentina, a country that accounts for almost half of the company's billing activities. "We have had no impact from the recession, but on the contrary.We have increased activity, we have gained new users and existing users have increased the average usage. 39; Uber Eats, Glovo and Rappi are entered, the activity was catapulted, because it is so that she installed the process of asking for something more everyday ", says the CEO.

On this road, the challenge is to generate new buying opportunities and that the application seems to solve everyday problems such as buying in a pharmacy, the neighborhood store or the management of personal orders, services already offered by the competition. In turn, OrdersYa plans to launch its own short-term digital portfolio, which manages payments within the platform and generates opportunities in the financial sector. Ten years after the launch, Burschtin has new ambitions: "The penetration and volume are still very low.In China, two platforms coexist (Eleme and Meituan) and every month, they spend more orders than the entire population We still have markets with a penetration of 4 or 6%, some 15 %.It is missing a lot of things.Our goal is to have as many orders as locals, and we are witnessing a strong expansion in the short term. "

Mini bio

• Training: He is 33 years old and is a Systems Engineer from the ORT University of Montevideo.
• First steps: In 2009, two faculty colleagues are badociated with the launch of OrdersYa, with an initial capital of $ 70,000.
• New: Today, the company is controlled by the German group Delivery Hero and has 15,000 dealers between Uruguay, Chile, Panama, Costa Rica and Argentina.

Business with oriental stamp

Orders C & # 39; is already the spearhead of a new wave of business and investment in the Uruguayan market.

IN ADDITION