Home delivery platform Docaan appeared to have halted trading this week, with its website down for several days on end.
It comes after its prime convenience store partner LA Foods put an end to its four-month trial with Docaan after finding it “unsuccessful”.
Docaan, an online convenience shopping platform promising delivery in 60 minutes, launched in November with LA Foods as its first retail partner. The self-funded start-up takes orders on its website and retail partners are expected to make the deliveries themselves.
“I just think there wasn’t enough marketing behind it and it didn’t gain traction,” LA Foods director Arfan Hussain told The Grocer:
“There are so many other apps out there that have spent so much money on their businesses like Zapp, Gorillas and Getir, that do big money-off deals. I think Docaan was just brought into the market too late.”
The London-based Nisa retailer went live with Docaan in five stores out of its 16-strong estate. It also partners with Deliveroo across the majority of its stores.
The November launch with Docaan was a month behind schedule, after supplier cost increases forced the retailer to change the price of hundreds of products, both in store and on Docaan’s platform. Because the home delivery start-up hadn’t yet integrated with the retailer’s EPoS system, all prices changes had to be done manually.
It meant Hussain had to amend around 400 products manually from an inventory of over 1,000 lines.
Docaan said last year that linking the software with EPoS suppliers would be a “real game-changer” but would need a “huge investment”.
Docaan has been approached for comment.
No comments yet