How App Founded by JKUAT Student Earned Kenyan Cooks Ksh 4.7M

A Kenyan graduate, who founded a food delivery app while still in University, has secured Ksh 4.7 million in revenues for a number of restaurants operating around Juja, Kiambu County.

Speaking to Kenyans.co.ke, the graduate noted that he founded the company, Liquid, during his fifth year at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology (JKUAT) when he was pursuing a degree course in Electronics and Computer Engineering.

He noted that since inception, the app had attracted 4,620 users, over 20 restaurants and made over 30,000 deliveries in a span of two years. The company typically delivers food and goods priced between Ksh100 and Ksh200.

His e-commerce site was created in 2018 but he pivoted to an app while running his own restaurant in Meru. His goal was to onboard other small scale restaurants in regions not covered by mainstream apps.

“The idea came about during the Covid-19 era while I was running my restaurant (called Liquid) back in Nkubu, Meru. To be unique and improve customer acquisition, I decided to have an app where my customers would be able to order food from and have it delivered at their convenience. Tech wows people, especially if the service itself works and it proved a success,” he stated.

“When schools reopened in late 2020, I decided to transfer this model to the restaurants around my campus and build a business around it. With the help of a few great friends, Steve Biko and Tom Orina, Liquid was officially born in January 2021.”

When he moved the services to Juja, closer to JKUAT, students living both within and outside campus were fascinated by the technology and quickly embraced the solution.

However, the main challenge was getting restaurants to join the app.

“One of our earliest challenges was the resistance from restaurants to try our product mainly because we were small still but we solved this by simply doing more marketing around campus,” he added.

“One mistake we did was thinking that we had to buy everything for our business to run smoothly, we bought two motorcycles to help with delivery but later resorted to on-boarding the local motorcycle taxi guys to do delivery at a small fee. Using what is already available instead of starting from scratch.”

Since most of its customers are university students, the company has to do aggressive marketing every new year to secure new clients.

So far, the service is available in Thika Town, Juja, Kahawa Sukari, Jomoko, Kahawa Wendani, Ruiru Ndani, Kamakis/Bypass, Meru Town and Meru Makutano.

“Our major plan is expansion to other major towns. We have had to secure the funds for this as marketing will be key during this drive as well as streamlining our delivery operations,” he explained.