Getir is a Turkish grocery and restaurant food delivery platform founded by Serkan Borancili, Tuncay Tutek, Dogancan Dalyan, and Nazim Salur. Salur got the idea for the company after wondering if food could be delivered nearly as quickly as taxis could be hailed.
As a dark supermarket operator, Getir makes money by selling items at a 10% premium to traditional supermarkets and retailers. Margins are higher because the company only leases the warehouses where the dark stores are located.
Getir also charges a flat delivery fee on orders above a certain threshold, with fees varying according to the country served.
Getir is a Turkish grocery and restaurant food delivery platform founded by Serkan Borancili, Tuncay Tutek, Dogancan Dalyan, and Nazim Salur.
The on-demand service claims to deliver food and other items in as little as ten minutes.
Salur and Borancili knew each other from the Turkish ride-hailing app BiTaksi, where users could hail a cab anywhere in the city in no more than three minutes.
The co-founders wanted to see if similar expediency was feasible in the food delivery space.
Getir was launched in 2014 at a time when Turkish customers had not yet become accustomed to ordering groceries online.
With online grocery deliveries taking up to a week, the co-founders decided to deliver within ten minutes.
Tutek later noted the significance of this decision:
“Delivering within 10 minutes is significant for customers, because 10 minutes means right now. If we can achieve delivery within 10 minutes, we can retain our competitive advantage even when other players come into play.“
The team commenced operations in a rented office and used a former florist building as warehouse space.
For the first few years, business operations were difficult.
In addition to a preference to purchase groceries from bricks-and-mortar stores, Turkish consumers also avoided paying with credit cards.
To overcome this resistance, Getir invested heavily in marketing campaigns and recruited a team of early adopters to experience ultrafast delivery for themselves.
There were also problems with securing investment funding, as Turkey was not known to be a breeding ground for successful start-ups.
Getir finally secured a $38 million round of Series A funding in January 2020 as the COVID-19 virus began spreading around the world.
As millions were forced into lockdown, revenue increased over 500% during the remainder of 2020.
Getir has a revenue generation strategy common to many food delivery companies. Let’s take a look at this strategy in more detail below.
Grocery sales
Getir operates a network of dark supermarkets where consumer orders are fulfilled by a team of specialized pickers.
Most items for sale are marked up by approximately 10% over similar products seen in traditional supermarkets.
This margin is where the company makes the majority of its money.
Margins are also increased since Getir does not own the warehouses where the supermarkets are housed. This allows the company to avoid typical owner/operator costs.
Delivery fees
Delivery fees are charged to the consumer for every order they place on the Getir platform and vary from country to country.
The delivery in the United Kingdom, for example, is £1.99 – though at the time of writing the delivery fee has been waived for British customers.
Note also that the order total must come to £10 or more to qualify for delivery.
DoorDash is a platform business model that enables restaurants to set up at no cost delivery operations. At the same time, customers get their food at home and dashers (delivery people) earn some extra money. DoorDash makes money by markup prices through delivery fees, memberships, and advertising for restaurants on the marketplace.
Glovo is a Spanish on-demand courier service that purchases and delivers products ordered through a mobile app. Founded in 2015 by Oscar Pierre and Sacha Michaud as a way to “uberize” local services. Glovo makes money via delivery fees, mini-supermarkets (fulfillment centers that Glovo operates in partnership with grocery store chains), and dark kitchens (enabling restaurants to increase their capacity).
Grubhub is an online and mobile platform for restaurant pick-up and delivery orders. In 2018 the company connected 95,000 takeout restaurants in over 1,700 U.S. cities and London. The Grubhub portfolio of brands like Seamless, LevelUp, Eat24, AllMenus, MenuPages, andTapingo. The company makes money primarily by charging restaurants a pre-order commission and it generates revenues when diners place an order on its platform. Also, it charges restaurants that use Grubhub delivery services and when diners pay for those services.
Instacart’s business model relies on enabling an easy set up for grocery stores, the comfort for customers to get their shopping delivered at home, and an additional income stream for personal shoppers. Instacart makes money by charging service fees, via memberships, and by running performance advertising on its platform.
Lyft is a transportation-as-a-service marketplace allowing riders to find a driver for a ride. Lyft has also expanded with a multimodal platform that gives more options like bike-sharing or electric scooters. Lyft primary makes money by collecting fees from drivers that complete rides on the platform.
Uber is a is two-sided marketplace, a platform business model that connects drivers and riders, with an interface that has elements of gamification, that makes it easy for two sides to connect and transact. Uber makes money by collecting fees from the platform’s gross bookings.
Postmates is a food delivery service built as a last-mile delivery service platform connecting locals with shops. Postmates makes money by collecting fees (commission, delivery, service, cart, and cancellation fees). It also makes money via its subscription service (called Unlimted – $9.99/month or $99.99 annually) giving free delivery on every order of more than $12.
Uber Eats is a three-sided marketplace connecting a driver, a restaurant owner and a customer with Uber Eats platform at the center. The three-sided marketplace moves around three players: Restaurants pay commission on the orders to Uber Eats; Customers pay the small delivery charges, and at times, cancellation fee; Drivers earn through making reliable deliveries on time.
Coupang is a South Korean eCommerce company. Coupang makes money by selling consumer items through its desktop and mobile eCommerce platform. The company also collects various fees from its food delivery, video streaming, and advertising services.
Amazon has a diversified business model. In 2021 Amazon posted over $469 billion in revenues and over $33 billion in net profits. Online stores contributed to over 47% of Amazon revenues, Third-party Seller Services, Amazon AWS, Subscription Services, Advertising revenues and Physical Stores.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
