Egypt’s RoadRunner raises six-figure seed to offer on-demand delivery solutions to restaurants and other businesses

Cairo-based logistics startup RoadRunner has raised six-figure seed investment, it told MENAbytes today without disclosing the exact size of investment. It said that the investment came from a strategic individual investor who doesn’t want to be named at this point.

Founded in 2019 by Khaled Taha and Ahmed Radi, both of whom were previously working with Delivery Hero brands in Egypt, RoadRunner offers quick on-demand delivery solutions to restaurants and other businesses in Cairo, Tanta, and Mansoura.

The model of RoadRunner is different from conventional food delivery players who partner with restaurants to help them receive orders and deliver it on their behalf for a cut between 25 to 35 percent (of the order value).

It acts as an on-demand delivery partner for restaurants and other businesses that don’t want to pay the high cut to food delivery aggregators but also don’t have or don’t want to use their own fleet (as managing it could sometimes be even more expensive). The Cairo-headquartered startup works with restaurants using its network of salaried drivers and charges them a fixed fee for every delivered order.

“We help the vendors replace their fleet with our highly trained network of Runners so they don’t have to pay a monthly salary or hire an operations team to manage the delivery of orders. They can use our app or web portal to request a rider as soon as they receive an order and have him deliver the food,” said the startup.

Khaled Taha, the founder, and CEO of RoadRunner, speaking to MENAbytes, said, “Most of the startups are only interested in volumes. We, as a business, however, from day one, have been focused not only on that but on the profitability of these transactions as well. It has helped us reach a fairly large number of transactions in a short time and positive gross profit as well on every single order.”

“Our model offers vendors a reliable on-demand delivery model which helps them cut their costs without having an in-house fleet,” he added.

RoadRunner claims that it currently works with over 70 restaurants including TBS, Mahraja, and Pasta 2go. It is also in the process of partnering with pharmacies and some other businesses.

Ahmad Radi, the co-founder and CMO of RoadRunner, told MENAbytes that the startup is also looking to launch an on-demand delivery service for individual customers that is expected to be rolled out within the next few weeks. He also said that the startup operates with positive unit economics and will be raising a significantly larger round very soon to expand to some other markets of the region.