DAVAO CITY—Consumers in at least two cities in Mindanao are beginning to patronize the services of a recently formed mobile application firm to buy goods and services from their favorite stores and facilities.
This new online service provider is called StreetBy, formed in Cagayan de Oro City in 2016. After formally operating last year, StreetBy was already making 100 deliveries daily within Cagayan de Oro and its suburbs. It has monitored daily mobile user downloads reaching 15,000 to inquire into the kind and type of products they could deliver.
“What’s attracting our online merchants—the companies that tapped us to have their products delivered—is our offer of delivering the product to the end-users or consumers at the same price that it is bought directly from their respective stores,” Benjo Francisco, StreetBy marketing officer, said.
For example, he said, a burger bought at P50 from a particular chain of fast-food store would still be the same price that a consumer would be paying when the same burger is delivered to his or her home or office.
“That is the advocacy that we carry in the business: to help both the consumers and our merchants,” Francisco told the BusinessMirror on Thursday.
Requests
ACCORDING to Francisco, StreetBy’s merchants “are not the usually big-name companies that can afford to go into both interface and online selling.”
“Our merchants are small; they are start-ups that want to tap the online market and online delivery service like us but which could not afford to have their own mobile application and online delivery,” he said. “So they tap us instead.”
Food is among the more popular items that consumers want to have delivered to their homes or specified location. Another requested service is hotel accommodation.
“Consumers would be inquiring from us a lot about laundry, services of professionals such as photographers for wedding occasion,” Francisco said.
National
FORMED by mostly self-made young professionals, StreetBy expanded to Malaybalay City in Bukidnon in March this year and in Davao City last May. Some 100 companies, mostly food stores and hotels, in Davao City have signed up with StreetBy. The firm also formed a partnership with Davao’s Errands, also a service delivery operation here.
StreetBy’s partnership with Davao’s Errands was signed by StreetBy CEO Ronald Rhey P. Minoza and Val Gerald Lino S. Marquez, together with Ricky Hanz Tagabucba and Emmanuel Francis Torre, Errands owner and general manager, respectively.
The company plans to go nationwide but only after establishing a solid network among the key Mindanao cities.
“With the goal to position the business nationally, Davao indeed is the perfect location for StreetBy’s expansion. The city has been included in the list as one of the world’s 100 super cities not only because of its well-advanced business outsourcing sector, but also due to the city government’s positive reception and adaptiveness to digital transformation,” a StreetBy statement sent to the BusinessMirror said.
Evidence
THE company said its presence in Cagayan de Oro has been a solid evidence of its attraction to online consumers, “with the most recent data of catering up to 100 deliveries daily and its growing 15,000 user downloads—making it the most popular delivery platform in Northern Mindanao to date.” The company said Davao consumers may book for delivery of their items through Errands, but directly from their smartphones using StreetBy.
“StreetBy is a total lifestyle app—aside from its food delivery feature, users can book for hotel rooms and activities, order ahead at restaurants, purchase event tickets, request for parcel delivery with cash handling and queueing services, book for on-demand laundry service and more upcoming features completing the total lifestyle experience,” the statement added.