The ultimate goal is to strengthen the Group’s operations in existing geographies and further expand its footprint by winning market share and attracting new customers and partners.
Strengthening our presence
With a view to strengthening its presence in the current geographies, launching services, and streamlining operations to enable a world-class customer experience, this part of the strategy is primarily focused on building on the Group’s existing coverage and providing full support to its recent expansions. This is anticipated to be accomplished internally by continuously improving operations and externally by bringing in new partners that can significantly enhance the network.
The ultimate goal is to strengthen the Group’s operations in existing geographies and further expand its footprint by winning market share and attracting new customers and partners. As of end 2022, the Group has been able to successfully accomplish this objective by investing in advanced technical and digital infrastructure for platforms like Jahez, PIK and BLU Store, and in the operations of Co Kitchens and Logi.
An ambitious expansion drive
Several initiatives were carried out during the year to further strengthen the Group’s ambitious expansion plans under this strategic pillar. These initiatives are all geared toward providing customers with better services and differentiating the Group distinctly and clearly from the competition.
By conducting studies of market and customer tendencies and trends, the Group, in partnership with AlHilal Club, officially launched BLU Store in August 2022. This new business specializes in the sale and marketing of sportswear, fitness gear, and products - particularly AlHilal branded products. It also has a media centre and ticketing services for sporting and non-sporting events, including concerts. It also offers a variety of other sporting brands through its e-commerce platform.
The new business model, which aims to provide a ‘one-stop-shop solution’ for all sporting needs, has also invested in robust technological solutions via the “BLU Store” application. This is the first interactive app of its kind in the GCC and throughout the Region, underscoring the Group’s capabilities. Today, sports enthusiasts across the world can purchase what they desire through the platform.
As a measure of strengthening strategic partnerships, BLU Store has, apart from its strategic tie up with the AlHilal Club for Club-branded products, has also partnered with both local and international brands where customers can order sports-based clothes and accessories they desire. Additionally, BLU Store has also focused on providing easy access to sports enthusiasts to book and purchase tickets to witness their favorite sporting events. In order to keep their fan base close and allow them to view the Club’s historical triumphs on various occasions, BLU Store also provides an interactive virtual museum for AlHilal.
Moreover, to ensure further excellent customer service and expand its presence in more cities, the Group took measures to develop business operations across all its supporting business verticals.
The Jahez platform, at the centre of the Group’s operations, has been relentless in its pursuit of superior, cutting-edge technology that serves as a source of orders for merchants, offering full logistical support and payment collection processes. Through Jahez, the Group provides quick, dependable, and varied delivery options to customers throughout the Kingdom. The Company has expanded to more than 90 cities in less than five years, and it now operates in three countries, serving more than 25,000 merchant branches with more than 60,000 delivery drivers.
PIK platform aims to provide customers with direct access to products from merchants and has continuously expanded its quality to meet global best practices. A key initiative implemented during the year was the development and launch of a seamless portal for store management for merchants, which enables them to easily add offers and deals for products.
Similarly, in addition to the one Co Kitchen space within the Kingdom in 2020, eight new locations were added during 2022 in the Central Region as well as the Eastern Region and two others are work in progress. The actions taken in 2022 in this direction were motivated by the high demand of restaurants and the growth of urban populations, which inadvertently supported the expansion of the Company. Through effective Group synergies, apart from the location and equipment, Co Kitchen’s clients also benefit through the delivery functionality offered via the Jahez platform. This helps restaurants break into the market faster and opt for cost-saving mechanisms. In 2023, the Group also intends to construct and open several Co Kitchens locations in main cities in the Kingdom as well as Bahrain and Kuwait.
In addition, the Group also took strategic measures to ensure that new technological features and enhancements were implemented, aimed explicitly at retailers and delivery partners to improve logistics management for Logi and payment services across all of the Group’s services.
Key initiatives undertaken to develop Logi during the year include: enabling availability 24 hours a day, with prompt delivery in a short period of time, and the addition of tracking features and capacity to schedule multiple pick-ups with a potential to serve e-commerce business-to-business deliveries in addition to food delivery.
Red Color, the Group’s investment arm, aims to invest in emerging growth companies in the Group’s core sector and its adjacent industries in order to expand the current addressable market, enhance stakeholder experience, add new revenue streams, address operational issues, and guard against disruption. The business invested in Omniful Inc. in 2022, a provider of software as a service (SAAS) that gives traditional retail businesses the resources they need to transform into omnichannel e-commerce enterprises.
By adding new clients to its portfolio, implementing cost-cutting measures, and utilising its in-house expertise in researching market data that provides fresh insights into consumer behavior and market trends, Red Color hopes to increase the efficiency of all business verticals.
Ultimately, by providing excellent customer service, the Group aims to build a more distinctive brand within the existing market that strengthens loyalty among all stakeholders.
Operational enhancements
Given the rapid technological advancements, the Group aims to strengthen its prominence in the digital world by providing stakeholders with the much-needed technological integration for rapid, smooth, and efficient services.
This part of the strategy is primarily focused on bridging the digital gap and building on the Group’s existing digital prominence in the market. Through this, it is anticipated that Jahez will be the go-to-option for all industry stakeholders as it will evolve into a one-stop-shop solution for desired services.
Robust technological integration
The Group works hard to foresee the requirements of industry stakeholders such as customers, merchants, and delivery partners and also anticipate their objectives and aspirations in order to understand the best way to serve them.
This is essential for creating new updates and capabilities for technological platforms that ultimately become valuable tools for collaboration among the Group’s partners.
The Group has developed several technologies that provide automated, adaptable, and dependable technological platforms. The Jahez, PIK and BLU Store platforms rely on three main components that interact with merchants, customers, and delivery partners. These components are built on top of a mini-service architecture, described as follows:
Mobile application: Clients
The Group provides its Jahez, PIK and BLU Store platforms to customers through its user-friendly mobile applications, giving customers access to the platforms’ merchants and offers, order placement, payment processing, and direct delivery tracking through a simple and seamless user interface.
In line with one of the Group’s values, “simplicity,” the Group has several key digital transformational opportunities to benefit stakeholders. For example, in 2022, the Group took initiatives such as launching the new interface of the Jahez app to further enhance user experience and customer satisfaction.
Through the built-in chatbot, customers can quickly and easily get direct access to customer support. Customers using the Jahez platform can pass the time while waiting for their orders by playing an in-app game, among other small but thoughtful details. This boosts user interaction, encouraging users to stick with the Jahez app.
Mobile application: Delivery partners
Through its user-friendly mobile application Saned, the Group provides a platform for delivery partners for orders placed through Jahez, PIK and BLU Store platforms. Saned covers all logistical aspects of the delivery process, from the dispatch of the order to delivery until settlement with delivery partners.
The following are some of this application’s key features:
- The application has tools for distributing orders to delivery partners as efficiently as possible, taking into account a variety of variables such as the distance between the point of sale, the delivery location and the volume of active orders. Delivery partners enable Jahez, PIK and BLU Store platforms to choose the best delivery partner to fulfill the order in a reasonable amount of time.
- The application allows simple tracking and monitoring of the order journey, and an escalation engine alerts the Group’s Operations Team to take proactive action and support delivery partners in case of any issues, where they can communicate with them through the application. It enables delivery partners to use a map that displays demand by region and residential areas in their city, allowing them to increase the value of each delivery and fill more orders.
- Saned enables the settlement of balances between the delivery partners and the Group with just a few clicks and without the involvement of the Operations Team. The funds are transferred to the digital wallets of the delivery partners or vice versa. This allows the Group to automate the process and integrate e-wallets, saving its delivery partners the time and effort of travelling to one of the logistic offices and waiting in line to settle their accounts.
- All delivery partners are authorized by the Communications, Space, and Technology Commission (CST) through integration with the governmental platforms.
Web-based portal: Merchants
The Group makes its Jahez, PIK, and BLU store platforms available to merchants through its web-based portals, enabling them to streamline operations for their customers. Retailers can manage their branches, menus, and products on web-based portals while accessing orders from various users.
In addition to allowing quick and secure integration between merchant systems as well as Jahez , PIK and BLU Store platforms, these portals include several features and configurations that the merchant administrator can use, such as viewing product sales and allowing fast and secure integration between merchant systems and the platforms. As a result, their business planning and financial reporting processes can be managed with more flexibility, improving digital effectiveness.
At the same time, the merchant’s page is simple, where each user can manage their respective orders and have a detailed view of order details. The portal also has additional features, like a dashboard and reports, that assist retailers in analyzing and enhancing the performance of their brands and branches.
Centralized state-of-the-art administrative control
The Group has an extensive administrative system that consists of various dashboards and which connects to the Group’s various platforms and applications in order to give it access to real-time performance monitoring. It includes all aspects of the journey, such as merchant onboarding, customer support, reporting, and dashboards.
The Group’s Operations Team can manage and support merchants, customers, and delivery partners in one location. With the help of the built-in escalation engine, the team can quickly determine and address the reason for order delays. This allows them to avoid delays in orders proactively. Automated actions have been introduced to help the team smooth the order journey.
The Group views its technological systems as being robust, adaptable, trustworthy, and having a high level of availability. Over time, the Group has been successful in growing and enhancing its systems to include dependable elements that can keep providing services even in the event of high demand or third-party failure. Additionally, the Group employs application and data backups to aid in recovery in the event of any unanticipated outages.
Furthermore, the Group’s technology system development strategy enables it to lessen the risk associated with operating in different environments in order to balance risks and opportunities.
As a result, of the technology development the Group is also better able to innovate and update its services to keep up with anticipated sector growth. This advances the Group’s vision of being the most loved lifestyle platform and supports its expansion plans in the delivery sector via electronic platforms and supporting sectors.
Core strengths of the Company
The Group’s core strength, without which operations will not be possible, is its pillars. Since its inception, the Group has based its success on prioritizing the preservation of such strategic alliances. Hence, based on this reputation, the Group has the ability to attract and maintain a large base of merchants, customers, and delivery partners.
Enablers of our expansion drive
Merchant-base
The Group’s capacity to draw in and keep merchants is a prerequisite for its ability to grow geographically and reach its target audience. Because of the variety of its merchants, offerings, and geographic reach, the Group is able to give each of its customers a special experience, boosting participation and fostering the expansion of the Group’s sales.
As a measure to expand the merchant portfolio in 2022, the Group took measures to entice merchants ranging from different industries by letting them participate and be hands-on in the development and execution of marketing campaigns, in order to increase their own volume of orders and grow in line with the Company’s own volume growth.
As a result, the Group successfully increased the number of branches within its merchant portfolio from about 5,400 branches in 2019, to about 25,700 branches as of December 31, 2022.
Delivery partners
Delivery partners are a crucial part of the Group’s daily operational foundation - the essential link in completing the circuit between merchant and customer. In December 2022, the Group had over 60,000 delivery drivers under its wing as a part of achieving its mission of catering to customers efficiently and with excellence.
In line with the requirements of the concerned governmental entities, the Group started during 2022 the implementation of its own fleet for logistic services. Currently, the Group has a fleet with a high level of professionalism and productivity, securing an important portion of orders for its delivery platforms and enabling the Group to be one of the major players in the last-mile delivery segment.
Moreover, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, the Human Resource Development Fund (HRDF), and the Communications, Space & Technology Commission (CST) launched a self-employment support program in 2022 for Saudi citizens with fixed monthly salaries who work in the delivery industry through smartphone applications. This however is subject to certain controls and requirements. The program is effective for a period of 24 months from launch. An increase in the number of Saudi freelancers forming around 10% of total freelancers was witnessed.