oDe­liv­er’s busi­ness, which be­gan five years ago, is al­ready gen­er­at­ing prof­it from its core op­er­a­tions, even as it push­es ag­gres­sive­ly in­to faster, on-de­mand de­liv­ery, a bal­anc­ing act its lead­er­ship in­sists is de­lib­er­ate, not ac­ci­den­tal.

Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian spoke with Jonathan Clay­ton, CEO and co-founder of oDe­liv­er, which op­er­ates out of Cunu­pia, who out­lined a mod­el built on a prof­itable next-day de­liv­ery sys­tem that is now fund­ing ex­pan­sion in­to new­er ser­vices like In­stant De­liv­ery, where mar­gins are still evolv­ing.

“Our core busi­ness, our hub-and-spoke, next-day de­liv­ery mod­el is al­ready prof­itable, and that has been the foun­da­tion of our growth over the past few years,” Clay­ton ex­plained. “From ear­ly on, we made a con­scious de­ci­sion to build a mod­el that works eco­nom­i­cal­ly, not just one that grows vol­ume.”

That dis­tinc­tion is cen­tral to the com­pa­ny’s scal­ing. Rather than chas­ing growth through heavy sub­si­dies, Clay­ton point­ed to con­sis­tent rev­enue gen­er­a­tion from es­tab­lished ser­vices as the en­gine be­hind rein­vest­ment.

“In prac­ti­cal terms, our es­tab­lished ser­vices are gen­er­at­ing con­sis­tent prof­it to­day. That gives us the abil­i­ty to rein­vest back in­to the busi­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas like tech­nol­o­gy, in­fra­struc­ture and ex­pand­ing in­to new ser­vices,” he out­lined.

At the same time, new­er of­fer­ings are not yet con­tribut­ing at the same lev­el.

“New­er of­fer­ings, such as In­stant De­liv­ery, are still in a build-out phase. Right now, the fo­cus is on get­ting the ser­vice right, build­ing re­li­a­bil­i­ty, in­creas­ing adop­tion, and im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy as vol­umes grow.”

Prof­itable core off­sets ex­pan­sion risk

The com­pa­ny’s struc­ture is de­signed to ab­sorb the cost of scal­ing with­out un­der­min­ing its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion.
“So it’s re­al­ly a bal­ance. We have a prof­itable core busi­ness that sup­ports the com­pa­ny to­day, while we con­tin­ue to in­vest in new ca­pa­bil­i­ties that will dri­ve the next phase of growth,” Clay­ton not­ed. “The goal has al­ways been to grow in a way that is sus­tain­able, not de­pen­dent on a heavy sub­sidy.”

oDe­liv­er’s plat­form has on­board­ed more than 8,000 busi­ness­es, but us­age da­ta re­flects a more con­cen­trat­ed lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty. Be­tween 2,000 and 2,500 busi­ness­es trans­act week­ly, with around 4,000 ac­tive over the course of a month.

“That pat­tern is quite nor­mal for a plat­form like ours,” Clay­ton said. “There’s usu­al­ly a core group of busi­ness­es that re­ly on de­liv­ery as a con­sis­tent part of their op­er­a­tions, while oth­ers use it more pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly.”

The fo­cus now is less on on­board­ing and more on deep­en­ing en­gage­ment.

“What’s im­por­tant for us is not just on­board­ing busi­ness­es, but in­creas­ing how of­ten they use the plat­form,” he stat­ed, point­ing to new­er ser­vices as a dri­ver of more fre­quent us­age.

On the con­sumer side, the com­pa­ny has reached more than 500,000 in­di­vid­u­als, though Clay­ton in­di­cat­ed that tra­di­tion­al re­ten­tion met­rics are less rel­e­vant giv­en the plat­form’s struc­ture.

“Most cus­tomers in­ter­act with us through the busi­ness­es they’re buy­ing from, rather than com­ing di­rect­ly to oDe­liv­er as a stand­alone app,” he ex­plained. “What we do see, how­ev­er, is strong re­peat us­age across the plat­form.”

Com­pet­ing with­out

a price war

With in­ter­na­tion­al de­liv­ery plat­forms op­er­at­ing in T&T, pric­ing pres­sure re­mains a con­stant risk. Clay­ton made it clear that oDe­liv­er has avoid­ed com­pet­ing pure­ly on cost.

“We’ve been very de­lib­er­ate about not com­pet­ing pure­ly on price, be­cause that ap­proach usu­al­ly leads to heavy dis­count­ing that isn’t sus­tain­able in the long term.”

In­stead, the com­pa­ny’s mar­gins are pro­tect­ed through op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy. Its hub-and-spoke mod­el al­lows for struc­tured rout­ing and batch pro­cess­ing of de­liv­er­ies, re­duc­ing costs com­pared to one-off trips.

“Our hub-and-spoke mod­el al­lows us to group and move de­liv­er­ies in a more struc­tured way. That im­proves route plan­ning and re­duces un­nec­es­sary costs.”

Tech­nol­o­gy un­der­pins that ef­fi­cien­cy, from dis­patch sys­tems to re­al-time track­ing.|
“When those pieces work to­geth­er, it al­lows us to move more de­liv­er­ies with the same re­sources,” Clay­ton not­ed. “The re­sult is that we can of­fer com­pet­i­tive pric­ing while still main­tain­ing healthy mar­gins.”

Scale al­so plays a role in strength­en­ing its po­si­tion.

“To date, we’ve com­plet­ed over 1.2 mil­lion de­liv­er­ies, and we have thou­sands of busi­ness­es ac­tive­ly us­ing the plat­form across in­dus­tries like re­tail, phar­ma­cies, gro­ceries, food, and doc­u­ment de­liv­ery.”

Un­like many in­ter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors, Clay­ton point­ed to lo­cal adap­ta­tion as a dif­fer­en­tia­tor.
“Our sys­tem was de­signed specif­i­cal­ly for the lo­cal en­vi­ron­ment. That in­cludes han­dling cash trans­ac­tions, sup­port­ing a wide range of busi­ness types, and man­ag­ing dif­fer­ent de­liv­ery mod­els from next-day to in­stant with­in the same net­work.”

Dri­vers at the cen­tre

of the mod­el

The com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to scale de­pends heav­i­ly on its dri­ver net­work, which now in­cludes more than 500 in­di­vid­u­als.
“On av­er­age, we see dri­vers earn­ing be­tween $6,000 and $15,000 or more per month,” Clay­ton shared. “On a week­ly ba­sis, that works out to rough­ly $1,500 to $3,500 for dri­vers who are con­sis­tent­ly ac­tive.”

Ac­tu­al take-home in­come varies af­ter ex­pens­es such as fu­el, though Clay­ton main­tained that the sys­tem is de­signed to max­imise ef­fi­cien­cy.
“The mod­el is de­signed so that they are able to re­tain a mean­ing­ful por­tion of their earn­ings, es­pe­cial­ly when they are op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cient­ly and con­sis­tent­ly.”

The plat­form op­er­ates a hy­brid struc­ture, com­bin­ing flex­i­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion with more con­sis­tent full-time en­gage­ment.

“Some dri­vers treat it as a part-time op­por­tu­ni­ty, while oth­ers use it as a pri­ma­ry source of in­come,” he ex­plained. “Those who are more ac­tive tend to build more pre­dictable earn­ings over time.”

Ris­ing fu­el prices and in­fla­tion re­main key pres­sure points. Clay­ton point­ed to route op­ti­mi­sa­tion and im­proved util­i­sa­tion as the main re­sponse.

“We fo­cus heav­i­ly on route plan­ning, re­duc­ing idle time, and en­sur­ing that dri­vers are con­sis­tent­ly as­signed de­liv­er­ies in a way that makes their time on the road worth­while.”

“As vol­umes grow, dri­vers are able to com­plete more de­liv­er­ies with­in the same time­frame. That in­creased util­i­sa­tion is one of the key ways the mod­el sup­ports bet­ter and more con­sis­tent in­come over time.”

In­stant de­liv­ery re­shap­ing op­er­a­tions

The shift to In­stant De­liv­ery marks a sig­nif­i­cant op­er­a­tional change for the com­pa­ny, mov­ing from sched­uled lo­gis­tics to re­al-time ful­fil­ment.

“Pre­vi­ous­ly, our mod­el was built around sched­uled, next-day de­liv­er­ies,” Clay­ton said. “With In­stant De­liv­ery, we’ve moved to a re­al-time mod­el.”

Or­ders are now as­signed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, re­quir­ing faster sys­tems and broad­er dri­ver cov­er­age.

“As soon as an or­der comes in, it can be as­signed to a dri­ver al­most im­me­di­ate­ly,” he not­ed.

While de­mand is grow­ing, prof­itabil­i­ty is still de­vel­op­ing.

“In­stant De­liv­ery is still in a scal­ing phase, so our main fo­cus right now is on build­ing re­li­a­bil­i­ty, grow­ing de­mand, and mak­ing sure the ser­vice works con­sis­tent­ly.”

Clay­ton re­ject­ed the idea that the ser­vice is sim­ply a short-term growth tool.

“We don’t see In­stant De­liv­ery as a short-term cus­tomer ac­qui­si­tion tool. It’s a core part of how the plat­form is evolv­ing.”

As vol­umes in­crease, ef­fi­cien­cy is ex­pect­ed to fol­low.

“As the vol­ume of de­liv­er­ies in­creas­es, the mod­el nat­u­ral­ly be­comes more ef­fi­cient. Dri­vers are able to com­plete more jobs with­in the same time­frame.”

Over the next 12 to 18 months, In­stant De­liv­ery is ex­pect­ed to ac­count for a grow­ing share of ship­ments as con­sumer ex­pec­ta­tions shift to­ward speed.

Mer­chants see­ing rev­enue im­pact

For busi­ness­es us­ing the plat­form, de­liv­ery is in­creas­ing­ly tied to rev­enue growth.

“We’ve con­sis­tent­ly seen mer­chants in­crease their or­der fre­quen­cy and over­all sales once de­liv­ery be­comes part of how they op­er­ate,” Clay­ton said.

Re­tail re­mains the largest con­trib­u­tor to vol­ume, par­tic­u­lar­ly non-per­ish­able goods, but growth is ac­cel­er­at­ing in food, gro­ceries and phar­ma­cies.

“A lot of that is be­ing dri­ven by the shift to­ward faster ful­fil­ment, es­pe­cial­ly with the in­tro­duc­tion of In­stant De­liv­ery, where speed is a key fac­tor for cus­tomers.”

Small­er busi­ness­es, in par­tic­u­lar, are see­ing struc­tur­al ben­e­fits.

“For many of them, de­liv­ery opens up op­por­tu­ni­ties that sim­ply wouldn’t ex­ist oth­er­wise,” Clay­ton ex­plained. “They’re able to reach cus­tomers across dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try with­out hav­ing to in­vest in their own lo­gis­tics sys­tems.”

Scal­ing care­ful­ly, ex­pand­ing lat­er

oDe­liv­er’s im­me­di­ate fo­cus re­mains on strength­en­ing its do­mes­tic net­work be­fore ex­pand­ing re­gion­al­ly.

“We want to make sure that every­thing from our op­er­a­tions to our tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vice lev­els is work­ing as ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble at scale,” Clay­ton stat­ed.

While Caribbean ex­pan­sion is part of the long-term strat­e­gy, Clay­ton in­di­cat­ed that ex­e­cu­tion at home re­mains the pri­or­i­ty.

“It’s re­al­ly about get­ting the foun­da­tion right first, and then scal­ing from a po­si­tion of strength.”

In­vestor ex­pec­ta­tions re­flect that ap­proach.

“Our in­vestors ex­pect us to grow, but to do so in a dis­ci­plined and sus­tain­able way,” he added. “It’s not just about in­creas­ing rev­enue, it’s about build­ing a busi­ness that is ef­fi­cient, well-man­aged, and able to scale over time.”

Look­ing ahead, Clay­ton po­si­tioned oDe­liv­er as mov­ing be­yond lo­gis­tics in­to a broad­er op­er­a­tional plat­form for busi­ness­es.