Organisations sign up to receive fresh fruit boxes. There are a number to choose from. Once the selection is made and confirmed, Gingerbox delivers. To corporates only — the startup isn’t delivering to individuals at this point in time.
Gingerbox’s focus on fruits for offices is actually as a result of learnings from the startup’s previous incarnation, which was known as Jaramall. Visitors to that site will see a note informing them of the change. In Gingerbox’s past life as Jaramall, the online store carried products across different categories, including household items, personal care and baby products. Over time, the site skewed significantly towards food.
On becoming one of the first cohort of 440NG accelerator funded ventures, the startup is officially pivoting and has reimagined itself as Gingerbox.
According to Kunle Jinadu, the founder, Gingerbox will eventually go beyond fruits for offices again, and increase its range of products and customer segments over time. This time, I presume the scaling will be data driven.
Speaking of scale, despite the brutally lean approach the startup has adopted, Gingerbox still finds itself having to do some things that don’t scale. While cash on delivery is pretty standard by now for ecommerce in Africa, grocery startups like Supermart pointedly refuse to support it, insisting instead on receiving payment upfront and electronically, because of the perishable nature of their goods. Gingerbox hasn’t quite settled on one model over the other, and at the moment interacts with each customer to come to a payment arrangement that is mutually convenient. It definitely helps that their customers right now are just corporates, and not individuals.
Asides the convenience of delivery, healthy eating is one of Gingerbox’s value propositions, and founder, Kunle says that even as the operation scales, Gingerbox’s focus will remain on health food only.
