Kenafric Bakery: Transforming Delivery Services in Kenya with Leta
October 11, 2024Leta is on a mission to create the operating system for the future of African logistics. Our tailored logistics platform addresses the continent’s unique needs, enabling companies to move goods faster and cheaper. So far, we’ve assisted over 60 businesses in making 3 million deliveries and counting—partners like Simbisa Brands (the force behind Pizza Inn, Chicken Inn, and Galitos), Kingsmill Bread, and Chandaria Industries. At the forefront of this initiative is our CTO, Kip Maritim. Kip built the first version of Leta and currently leads our tech team of 12 engineers.
L-R: Anthony Ketter (CGO), Kip Maritim (CTO), and Nick Joshi (CEO)
Building the First Version of Leta
We sold the product before we even had a minimum viable product (MVP). Nick, our CEO, wanted to validate whether this could be a real business before committing to development. He secured a meeting with a potential customer even before we had a proper product. After that initial meeting, we created a prototype. This basic version helped us secure our first client, after which we shifted our focus to developing the full-fledged product we have today—a mobile app and a web app featuring a dashboard that provides businesses visibility into their deliveries.
Challenges with Scaling
While we envisioned building a delivery management system, the specifics were initially fuzzy. Deliveries operate differently across businesses, so we needed to create technology that any business could effectively use. Scaling our technology presented another set of challenges. Our proof of concept was in Nakuru, but the real test came when we launched in Nairobi. Launch day turned out to be our busiest day ever, but our tech couldn’t handle the traffic. We anticipated around 5,000 orders spread throughout the day but instead received 1,000 orders every 30 minutes. Our systems crashed under the pressure because our infrastructure couldn’t manage that level of traffic.Following these challenges during our Nairobi launch, we returned to the drawing board and rebuilt our technology with scalability in mind.
Building the Future of African Logistics Today
After our launch, we carefully rebuilt our tech with performance as a priority. We expanded our tech team to include more engineers, with small teams focusing on different parts of the application—the mobile app, backend, website, and cloud infrastructure. Today, we have a highly specialized team where different individuals own various aspects of our technology stack. At any given time, there’s a lot of building, testing, and fine-tuning happening. It’s deeply satisfying for the team to see the results of their work every day—it’s something our engineering team takes pride in as part of Leta.
Building the Tech Team at Leta
Before I met Nick, I already had a full-fledged tech team with whom I was building products. We had established chemistry and knew each other’s strengths from previous collaborations.So after meeting Nick and committing to build Leta with him, assembling a team was simply about convincing my existing team to join us. With an existing product mindset, it was easy to maintain that culture as we started hiring new talent.
The Vision for Tech at Leta
We’re striving to build a better future for logistics on the continent—the future of African logistics—guiding how I think about tech at Leta. This vision involves constantly iterating, improving, and developing new solutions for our customers—spanning areas from deliveries to visibility and forecasting. To achieve this effectively, we need to cultivate and maintain that product-first culture within our tech team. This includes leveraging new technologies like AI to enhance our products and better serve our customers. We’re also focused on growing the technical skills of our team members; many are currently enrolled in courses to learn new technologies applicable to their work at Leta. We’re committed to building a better future for logistics in Africa—and we’re looking for the best talent to help make that happen.If you’d like to learn more about our work at Leta, visit our website: Leta.