Seeking deliverance

FOR everyone trying to grab a bite whilst not offending fasting colleagues this month, in Dubai at least, you can now order a meal at your desk without picking up the telephone to say ‘butter chicken and naan, please’.

Newly launched web portal waselly.com aims to make the home delivery process easier, and users can now view menus of different outlets online, place orders from multiple restaurants, and save their favourites, all free of cost, according to the company’s managing partner Mohammed Nassar.
The website has an extensive portfolio, including such popular take-out choices as Hardee’s, KFC, Domino’s Pizza, Burger King, Olive House, Sumo Sushi and Bento and Ruan Thai. GW caught up with Nassar for a quick one. Excerpts:

What does waselly mean?
Waselly means ‘Deliver to me’ in Arabic. Incidentally, when first trying to come up with a name for the venture, there essentially were two paths to choose from, either go for a self-explanatory generic name like Dubai Delivery, which seemed rather bland and hollow, or come up with an indigenous name that made an impression, or at the least, confused! So it was decided to go with waselly.com.

What prompted the launch of your service?
It was the entrepreneurial bug in me. I had been thinking about this idea for some time now and the conditions finally seemed right and ripe, so I packed up my career in the construction industry and launched waselly.com with Bishoy Azmy, an old friend, and now partner and investor.

Does the launch follow a study or research?
Indeed, five or six months prior to the official launch, I contracted a small Dubai-based firm to do a preliminary assessment of the market and the potential acceptance of the concept. Results looked very favourable.

So why do you think a web-based service would work here? What Internet penetration statistics do you have?
One of the questions in our initial survey was to ask respondents to list in order of decreasing priority the current problems they face with the existing home-delivery model (from a pre-chosen set of answers) and the delays and mix-ups topped the list. In response to this problem, waselly.com, due to its visual-based interface, allows the user to clearly, by selecting certain items, identify his or her requirements, the user ensures that the same requirements are clearly conveyed to the agents, decreasing room for error. Moreover, users can also pre-select a delivery time for their food, so you can place an order at 8am requesting that it arrives at 2pm, therefore reducing the risk of delays
People also complained about waiting on hold or always getting a busy dial tone, as well as having to repeatedly explain oneself to the customer agent. Both are completely eliminated by using waselly.com. 
So the idea does address some very real and existing problems, besides adding new value to the ordering process, by being able to browse through menus without needing a huge stack at home, and also receiving some special offers and discounts.

OK. So what response have you seen since the launch?
In the first two months since we started, we built a database of about 500 registered users. Our hits per day have increased by roughly 200 per cent through July and our Alexa ranking has jumped nearly 600 per cent in the same period. Although still quite far from our ultimate targets, we are making big strides in the right direction.

What investment are you making?
Time and money! If you’re asking about the amount of capital we have invested, I will refrain from answering.

If it’s a free service, where do you make your money?
Very true, the service is completely free for all users, they pay no added delivery charges, and save the cost of a phone call, our revenue is generated from the business-to-business end of the service through agreements with the participating restaurants

Do you have plans to take it regional, around the GCC?
Currently we are only available in Dubai, but once that is an established service, we aim to grow in as many ways as we can.

Keith J Fernandez