Tikus, The new delivery app in town

Tikus is the newest addition to the food delivery apps operating in Addis Ababa. It is a product of Avenir technologies, Which was founded by 6 young founders. They released their app back in May and have been gaining popularity and taking a share of the market progressively. But what really outshines Tikus from the other Food delivery apps is that they are trying to fully operate in an eco-friendly manner. They use bicycles and E-bikes to achieve a 0 carbon operation. Operating in a 0 carbon environment is really difficult especially if your operations consist of transportation.

Tikus has recently been granted funding from The Bridges program that is supported by the Mastercard foundations for their job creation plan. They plan to create more than 1000 new jobs for the youth in the coming month. They also help their employees by organizing a loan from banks so that their bikers can own their bikes for as low as a 10% down payment. Apart from this they also give their bikers good benefits.

Tikus has registered more than 50 restaurants in Addis. Their iOS and Android apps have also been launched in May. They have created a pretty good app especially comparing it to their contenders. The app has a decent look and feel apart from some minor bugs here and there. You have an option to change the language of the app between Amharic and English, which in my opinion is a must-have feature for apps that are deployed in Ethiopia. They also have a referral system in place, which encourages users to share the app with their friends increasing their users.

The app has some minor user interface issues, like the spacing and alignment issues on the restaurant cards. There are also some confusing things like when a restaurant is closed and you try ordering from that restaurant, the app loads as if it was placing the order but then later shows you that the restaurant is closed. Apart from bugs and issues like this, the app functions really well. And as the app is still in its early versions, I hope issues like this will be fixed in the upcoming updates.

The other main feature of Tikus is their call center. They have a call center on 9133 in which you can place your order even when not connected to the internet. This is very important for businesses as many people still prefer using call centers more than apps and websites. Although this habit of our society should progress, meeting users where they are is really important for startups, so hats off to the Tikus team for nailing this.

Tikus also really focuses on the safety and hygiene of their bikers to provide quality services. They give detailed instructions and rules to their bikers at the onboarding meeting with their bikers. Together with their eco-friendly operations, competitive pricing, and focus on the hygiene of their bikers, they really have a shot at taking a good market share of the food delivery business currently dominated by DeliverAddis.