Applying technology, Nguyen Canh Duong built Deli Market with an online wholesale market model to optimize the agricultural supply chain, providing more than 1,200 items to eateries, restaurants, hotels with competitive prices, flexible delivery time...
Although it has only been officially in operation for over a year, Cho Deli has a fairly stable number of customers. Each month, the start-up supplies raw materials to 150-200 customers, including eateries, restaurants, supermarkets, luxury hotels... in Ho Chi Minh City and Binh Duong.
Deli Market owns 1 main warehouse and 4 sub-warehouses. The delivery team is developed by the start-up itself, in addition to cooperating with an external shipping partner.
Nguyen Canh Duong, CEO of Deli Market
Midnight order, 5am delivery
The current agricultural supply chain is not really efficient when goods have to go through many intermediaries before reaching the final customers. For businesses in the F&B (food and beverage) industry, the story is similar. Input materials need to go through a number of suppliers, distributors, agents, etc., before reaching the kitchen of each restaurant. For this reason, input material prices are often pushed up.
Not to mention, restaurant and eatery owners have to work with many suppliers to buy enough goods every day, making the purchasing process time-consuming and laborious.
Understanding the problems in the traditional agricultural supply chain, Nguyen Canh Duong founded the start-up Cho Deli, aiming to provide restaurants and eateries with comprehensive purchasing solutions.
Deli Market is an online wholesale market, providing a catalog of 1,200 items of vegetables, meat, fish..., from fresh products processed daily to frozen goods and dry goods.
Daily order closing time at Cho Deli is from 11:30 pm the previous day, orders are delivered at 5 am the next morning. Even with orders placed at 1 am, the 9x founder said, Cho Deli can still meet the demand.
“Deli Market applies technology to optimize operations, so it can operate on a large scale, while still having competitive prices compared to small retail stores,” Duong said.
To ensure the source of input materials, Cho Deli cooperates with about 100 suppliers. The start-up controls the quality of input products through 3 steps: verifying, evaluating information and the supplier's ability to meet the requirements before signing a cooperation contract; evaluating the quality report of the shipment sent by the supplier before officially importing the goods; and checking the products after importing the goods.
However, Duong also admitted that with fresh agricultural products, the supply chain only lasts a short time due to the nature of immediate delivery; not to mention the large volume and variety of goods that start-ups handle every day. Therefore, start-ups cannot avoid errors in the supply process.
In return, they focus on customer care. For each order that delivers the wrong item, is missing an item, or has any problem with the product, Cho Deli commits to supporting customers to exchange/replace the item within 1 hour.
Improve technology to better serve customers
Nguyen Canh Duong graduated from the Faculty of Finance and Accounting, Monash University (Australia). His biggest passion is entrepreneurship . The 9x CEO has held various positions at Lazada, FPT Software... and started a business with an application specializing in synthesizing discount codes and accumulating points before building Cho Deli.
At the end of 2021, the start-up began supplying agricultural products to areas locked down due to Covid-19 in Thu Duc (HCMC). In February 2022, when trade returned to normal, Duong and his team returned to their core business of supplying input materials to F&B businesses, with the first group of customers being restaurants.
Providing a wide range of products at competitive prices, Cho Deli quickly received support from restaurant owners. After that, the start-up gradually expanded to other groups such as restaurants, supermarkets, and hotels.
Duong shared that through practical implementation, he realized that the Deli Market model faced two main difficulties.
Firstly, agricultural products are items without specific quality control standards, so when receiving the goods, customers may want to return them due to their subjective assessments. Not to mention, the process of importing and packing goods in large quantities is prone to errors.
Second, the characteristic of the F&B business is that the amount of outstanding debt is high; customers accumulate debt for 1-4 weeks before paying at once.
In the current difficult period, the business activities of partners are affected, making it inevitable that Cho Deli will also be affected.
However, Duong and his team are constantly improving their technology to move forward. If in 2022, Cho Deli focused on understanding the characteristics of each customer group, then 2023 is the time to optimize the process to better serve customers. The start-up is currently testing in Phu Quoc, in addition to the markets of Ho Chi Minh City and Binh Duong.
After completing the pre-seed funding round, Duong is planning to raise a series A round of funding for Cho Deli. However, the market is difficult, so the founder does not have high expectations for the option of raising additional investment capital.
“At this time, raising capital is quite difficult. Therefore, we will try to optimize the process, manage debt closely to reach the break-even point and soon make a profit,” Duong shared.
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