GrocerApp raised $6.7 million to deliver Lahore's weekly shop, and has not published a number since
The Lahore grocer says it ran at about 2,500 orders a day in 2021 on a $16 basket. Its model depends on a margin it has never disclosed.
GrocerApp has one of the clearest sets of numbers in Pakistani online grocery, and every one of them is from 2021. In that year the Lahore company said it was selling about $1.2 million a month on a basket of about $16. Divide the first figure by the second and the result is 75,000 orders a month, or roughly 2,500 a day, from a business that had raised $1 million of seed money and then $5.2 million in a Series A. What it has not said, then or since, is what it kept from each of those orders.
From marketplace to warehouse
Ahmad Saeed started the company in 2016 with Hassaan Sadiq and a third cofounder, after working in marketing at the car listings site PakWheels. The first version was a marketplace: an order was passed to a shop, and a rider collected the goods and delivered them. Saeed told Daily Pakistan in August 2021 that the company changed to a fulfilment model in March 2019, buying stock, holding it in its own warehouses and picking each order itself.
The change matters because it moved the company from earning a commission to owning the margin and the risk. Saeed said revenue rose tenfold under the new model before the pandemic arrived. He described building its own warehouse management system and assisted picking tools, and sourcing fresh produce directly from wholesale mandis.
The pandemic then acted, in his words, as an accelerator for online grocery, compressing a shift he had expected to take two or three years. At the seed announcement in September 2020 he said growth was running at 20 to 30 percent a month. A $1 million seed round, led by Jabbar Internet Group of Dubai in its first Pakistani investment, brought total funding to $1.5 million, according to MENAbytes. The company said the money would go on supply chain efficiency, automation and the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, where it already offered about 1,500 products against more than 4,000 in Lahore.
The 2021 numbers
The Series A, announced on 14 June 2021, was led by Hayaat Global of Dubai, with Millville Opportunities Fund of New York, Wamda Capital, Jabbar, Nama Ventures, Haitou Global and Pakistani backers LeanBricks and Walled City taking part. The company reported annualised revenue above $15 million, and growth of 300 percent in monthly orders and revenue between July 2020 and March 2021. The twin cities were about a quarter of the business. Faisalabad had been added, and Saeed said Karachi would follow by the end of the third quarter of 2021.
The two revenue figures agree with each other. Fifteen million dollars over twelve months is $1.25 million a month, close to the $1.2 million Saeed gave Daily Pakistan in August. At $16 an order, $15 million is about 940,000 orders a year. At the exchange rate of the time, around Rs157 to the dollar, a $16 basket is about Rs2,500.
The city split gives a second check. If the twin cities were a quarter of revenue, they were about 625 orders a day, and Lahore and Faisalabad together carried the other 1,900 or so. A fulfilment model needs density: a rickshaw that can drop six or eight orders in one neighbourhood is cheap, while one that drives to a single address is not. Lahore, where the company started in 2016 and stocks the widest range, is where that density is most likely to exist, and the newer cities are where it is least certain.
The $5.2 million Series A was about 4.2 months of the $1.25 million a month the company reported ($5.2 million divided by $1.25 million). That is a useful scale: the company raised less than half a year of sales, which fits Hayaat chairman Muhammad Ikhlaq's description of a team that had scaled with minimal funding and could succeed without relying only on cash burn.
How the delivery works
GrocerApp's customers order on the web or an app, and orders placed by 3 pm usually arrive the same day. The company picks and packs at a fulfilment centre, then bundles several orders onto a cargo rickshaw. Saeed said this gives better unit economics than quick commerce, the 30 to 45 minute delivery that Airlift, Cheetay and foodpanda were offering.
“We offer the largest assortment at best prices.”
The logic is sound. A scheduled delivery lets a rider carry many orders in one trip, so the delivery cost is spread over more baskets, and a warehouse far from the customer is cheaper to rent than a dark store in a neighbourhood. The trade is speed. Quick commerce sells the same product to the customer who needs it in half an hour; GrocerApp sells to the household that plans a day ahead.
The sum that decides whether it works is short. On a $16 basket each percentage point of gross margin is 16 cents. The company has not said its gross margin, the delivery cost per order, or whether the $15 million is gross merchandise value or net revenue. Without those three figures nobody outside can tell whether the 2,500 daily orders earned or lost money, and Saeed has said only that the unit economics are better than a faster rival's.
The test the rivals failed
The comparison is not flattering for the sector. Airlift announced a shutdown in June 2022 after an $85 million round, according to Profit. Dastgyr, another Pakistani commerce startup, cut 50 to 60 percent of a workforce of more than 500 and had raised more than $40 million. GrocerApp raised about $6.7 million in all, roughly a twelfth of what Airlift raised in a single round, and by its own account grew on slim funding. That is a reason to take its efficiency claim seriously, and also a reason to ask for the accounts that would prove it.
Saeed has been open about the hard part. Fresh produce, he told Daily Pakistan, is the category most difficult to replicate online, and quality control decides whether a customer returns. Riders are trained to check quality before handing over an order, and customer service replaces or refunds a bad one. Every refund comes straight out of a thin margin.
Partners and the open questions
In early 2022 the company became the first grocery mini app inside Easypaisa, the payments app, with scheduled same day delivery from 8 am to 8 pm. Neither side has said how many orders came through it. The launch coverage listed Karachi as launching soon, the same plan the company gave at its Series A.
Saeed set a high goal in 2021, saying that if the company scaled well it had a strong chance of becoming a billion dollar retail firm. No funding round has been announced since the Series A, and no accounts are public.
What would change the picture is simple to list. A gross margin, a delivery cost per order, the order count today, and the number of repeat customers would let a reader redo the sum above for 2026. Until the company publishes them, its model rests on figures that are now five years old, from a market where better funded rivals have since closed.
