Matthias Lacks, Rabbi Colombia: “While many are downsizing, we are scaling up the operation”

“It seems that 400 years have passed since the epidemic began.” Matias Lax, Argentine and Country Director of Rappi in Colombia, explains what it means to navigate in the midst of a health crisis and its plans for 2023 in that country, the cradle of the most relevant last-mile startups regionally, With a presence in nine countries.
Despite the fact that a health crisis is usually associated with a period of high growth for this company, Lacks acknowledges that “the pandemic has taken us all by surprise. None of us were ready.” Reports indicate that in practice it implied that from day to day demand tripled, when in reality they did not have the capacity.
For this reason, in their case, they implemented a series of measures to adapt and take advantage of the opportunity, says CEO of Conexión América at DFSUD.com. “We can write books about the epidemic from Rappi…,” he jokes.

what happened after that? “It was said that when the pandemic is over, the platforms will suffer because the orders will go away. And that was very nice, because that didn’t happen. I’m not just talking about Rabi.”
The reality, he noted, is that restaurants — which lived on a combination of income from delivery and face-to-face sales — when the pandemic came, part two went to zero. Today this restaurant is selling a higher volume of homes than it was at the height of the health crisis, in addition to selling the room from which it has already recovered. This means that technology and the transformation of these ecosystems add value to markets and make the pie bigger,” he emphasizes.

Plans for 2023: Grow in more places in Latin America

Rabi in Colombia is very strong, But it only accounts for about 10% of all deliveries made in that country, This gives them plenty of room to grow in different business areas.
The CEO highlights how he handles Turbo, his suggestion of super-fast delivery and how this opens up new opportunities for consumption, which is complemented by the Prime subscription plan, which doubled compared to subscribers they had last December, increasing the frequency of purchases.
“We are the best shopping mall because we are in the best corner of the city, which is your mobile corner. This also makes us generate that commitment with the user, who uses the platform very heavily,” he emphasizes.
Regarding the moment in the industry, where there have been profitability challenges for startups, which have translated into reductions in collaborators or even leaving companies, such as get over also iFoodLax says, “The challenge for the industry and for the entire startup world is to be sustainable and generate positive cash flow (…) so there are companies that have decided to leave Latin America because they don’t see it as attractive, because it’s not strategic, there are other countries that have decided to leave some countries eg iFood, which left Mexico a few years ago and is now also withdrawing from Colombia… We are very committed to Latin America and believe that the fact that Rappi exists as an ecosystem brings economic and social development to countries,” he emphasizes.
For this reason, he asserts that the only way to solve this problem is to provide more value to the user and allies, so that they can collect that value in terms of greater use of the platform and all that it generates.
“We are expanding our operations; while many are shrinking, We are scaling up the operation because we believe that if we reach more places in Latin America, we will grow in orders and this will generate a scale that will enable us to solve this challenge posed by us in the times ahead.”