Quickee.lk: Satisfying emergency cravings!

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

Many are the times when you’ve been at a friend’s place, it’s around 11 p.m. and you suddenly start craving a beef and cheese masala kottu from Pilawoos. You can almost taste the cheese melting into the piping hot rotti and the chunks of spicy beef but alas, Pilawoos doesn’t deliver and you’re feeling too lazy to go out and get it yourself at that hour or have no means of doing so. Instead, you root about your friend’s fridge for a reasonable substitute (which is almost never found).

This is the problem that Ashan Whittall and Mariam Moosa faced one evening at a friend’s place, except instead of a kottu, what they needed were merely a couple of bottles of soft drinks. If only someone could bring them to us, they pondered aloud. Another friend present piped up stating that the UAE has a delivery service that brings such goods right to your doorstep. Now where the rest of us would have thought if only we had that over here and stopped, Ashan and Mariam went a step further – several steps in fact – and thought, well, why don’t we start that here?

And an hour of frantic discussion later, ‘Quickee.lk’ was born.

Instant popularity

It’s currently the name on every other person’s Facebook status. Despite being barely three months old, Quickee has already garnered nearly 800 customers of which 350 are active customers who order from them at least once a week and this is purely through word-of-mouth and no advertising of any form. The Quickee Facebook page alone already boasts some 5,300 fans.

A delivery service, Quickee currently operates within Colombo and its suburbs, delivering various goods within 30 minutes of placing the order. Customers can place their orders via their website, hotline or Android mobile app and can pay by cash or card upon delivery. The minimum order is one item and the delivery charge of Rs. 100 is a set price – order one or 10 items, it’s just going to cost you Rs. 100.

“We are more of an emergency delivery service in the sense that we aren’t going to pick up your groceries for you, not yet anyway!” explained Ashan. “It’s more a service that satisfies your cravings.”

This is fairly obvious when you browse through the list of available items – kottu from Pilawoos, chocolate shakes from Choco Luv, chocolates, sweets, snacks, beverages, cereals – even macaroni and cheese and cup soup!

They currently operate from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. on weekdays and 24 hours a day on weekends. “We are hoping to commence a 24/7 service very soon,” he revealed.

“Although we try to deliver within 30 minutes, it does take a bit longer at times especially when customers order food that need to be prepared instantly as preparation time alone takes around 15 minutes, which gives our delivery guys only 15 minutes to deliver,” Ashan pointed out, but this hasn’t made their popularity dwindle in the slightest – in fact, their frank admissions and rapport with customers keep them using the service even more.

Good, bad and ugly

“We are really surprised by the response we have received so far!” Mariam admitted. “It’s been really difficult to keep up with the demand, especially these days as the weather is bad and people are lazy to step out – so they call us instead and our delivery guys have had a tough time battling the elements.”

“We have increased our fleet of motorcycles but it’s still hard to cope – there have been times when I’ve had to hop on a bike in my sarong in the dead of night to make deliveries!” Ashan added.

Another area that they really work on is customer service. Mariam explained that their staff has been trained to converse with customers, keep them updated on their orders and get as much feedback as possible.

“We see to customer complaints ourselves and try to rectify it immediately. For instance, we’ve gotten complaints about the packaging of some of the food delivered and we ended up having to speak to Pilawoos about this and they have now introduced better packaging – so it’s a learning experience for both ourselves and our suppliers,” Ashan noted.

Other goods such as soft drinks, chocolates, candy and condiments are provided to them wholesale by their suppliers and are stored in a warehouse, which makes for quick and efficient delivery.

“We try to be as truthful as possible with our customers – they really know the good, bad and ugly of this business,” Mariam added. “And in return, they are very understanding and give us excellent feedback on how we can improve our service.”

Tough beginnings

“We basically sold and pawned everything we owned to start this up – it’s all our money. We kicked off the process about three months ago and it took a lot of begging and convincing to even get people onboard,” explained Mariam, a psychology major.

Over the past three months, they have haggled with suppliers, who were very reluctant to be a part of the business, and managed to lure another investor – Shiyaz Naleem. “They had prepared a long Excel sheet which showed their incomes and expenses and it was really pessimistic!” Shiyaz said. “I’m a businessman and this looked like a new, innovative idea so I was eager to come onboard.”

Together with Shiyaz, the trio met with partners and has so far managed to land some heavyweights such as Nestle, Coca-Cola and the Stassen Group and firm favourites in Colombo including Pilawoos and Choco Luv.

The necessary licenses were obtained, office space and warehouse found in Rajagiriya and they were ready to roll. However, the first two months posted a dismal loss but suddenly, in the third month, the tide began to turn.

“Word started spreading and everything accelerated,” Ashan said. “Now, we just want to keep expanding – make Quickee a 24/7 service, take on more partners – it really is a learning process even for us.”

“It’s great being our own bosses,” he added, having previously worked at Victoria’s Secret and a couple of IT companies himself. “We are quite fond of each other but this is also very stressful so we end up having a go at each other’s throats after which we calm down, chill out and talk things out,” Mariam added, laughing.

Pix by Daminda Harsha Perera