Day 1-1000 of Travella: “We are the future of decentralised logistics”

Moses Ogunranti knew when the Nigerian logistics system stopped making sense for him. In 2016, after partnering with GreenLab Microfactory, an electronics distributor, to build robotic kits for kids, delivering these same kits across the nation was impractical. For kits built on the premise of affordability, domestic shipping was costly and digging deep into his profit margins. Even sourcing components from local suppliers as a small business had challenges of its own. “We would buy components from Lagos for about ₦1,500 ($1.03)…and then we end up delivering it to our office for ₦4,500 ($3.08).”

The problem was, no one was truly solving it. Not the key players in the logistics industry offering high prices with slow delivery times, or bus drivers with swift delivery and no way to be held accountable. For Ogunranti, it certainly wasn’t logistics and transportation startups that aggregated delivery prices of more popular logistics companies to determine theirs.

By 2018, a light bulb went off in his head. What if travellers picked up packages as they commuted across states, and earned money while they did? He did not know it yet, but that was the beginning of Travella, a consumer-driven logistics company, redefining the status quo of logistics in  Nigeria.

Day 1: Where the journey begins 

Ogunranti and his co-founder, Olufemi Christopher Agboola, launched Travella in January 2021.  “We allow everybody to be able to get involved in the delivery process,” Ogunranti says of the company’s operations.  “That means, if you’re travelling, you can pick a package, whether you’re going as a passenger in a public transport system or you own your own vehicle,” Ogunranti says.

Travellers can pick up a maximum of five parcels less than 3kg each and make, on average, ₦10,000 per trip. To determine what each parcel weighs, senders declare the weight and value of the parcels they want delivered.

Hundred users and three months later, Ogunranti wanted to scale. He signed up for Lion’s Den, a pan-African pitching show modelled after the American TV series, Shark Tank. The then 23-year-old student of the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), secured funding for his ‘peer-to-peer’ logistics company with the buy-in of three investors. 

A critical challenge with the peer-to-peer logistics system that Ogunranti was building was trust. On the pitch show, investors said as much. He recalls, “One popular question asked on the show was, how are you guys going to handle trust?”

 Just like drivers on ride-hailing apps, Travella approached its travellers as independent contractors: conducting background checks and appraising them with a rating system. Every traveller is registered on Travella’s system and verified by their Bank Verification Number (BVN), which allows Travella to know their name, state of origin and other important details.

Travella implemented geo-tracking to know where travellers were at all points during their commute times. The company makes sure all items are covered in case of an unforeseen loss financially protecting its customers. But verifying the travellers and tracking their journey was half the problem solved—how do the senders know to reach travellers delivering packages for them?

Day 300: The voyage for better visibility 

Lion’s Den aired in January 2022, and leveraging social media, word began to spread about Travella. For many businesses who were “looking for the cheapest, the fastest system,” Travella began to spread through word of mouth advertising. And so, capturing the B2B market became easier.

It was truly logistics for the people, by the people. Ogunranti says.

“We sell to clients, affordability and 24-hour service delivery, which is hard for centralised delivery services to do. Affordability and speed don’t often come together in the same scope.”

To determine the pricing for goods sent, Travella operated under a negotiation-based pricing system, where customers set prices that were comfortable for them. But as time passed, this became impractical.

Day 700: Stop signs and sour negotiations 

By late 2023, Ogunranti and his team realised that consumer-driven pricing came with challenges they could not look away from. What was once a unique value proposition started to raise friction between the senders and the travellers. “We figured the bargaining wouldn’t work.” Ogunranti says, “It was…stressful. [One person] charging a lot, and then [another] debating and debating. It wasn’t going to work, so we scrapped it.”

Ogunranti particularly considered that for the small businesses who comprised a large portion of his client base, running a business and having to constantly bargain logistics prices at a car park was unnecessarily complicated.

By early 2024, Travella transitioned from a negotiation pricing model to a standard pricing model, charging a flat rate of ₦ 4,500 ($3.08) for packages up to 3 kg, a percentage of which the company earns as revenue.

DAY 1000 and the miles after: Coverage, expansion and security

With 10,000 successful deliveries across Nigeria, Travella is inching closer to its operational sweet spot and earning invaluable trust from its customers. Ogunranti’s promise is that Travella will always deliver: Customers will receive their packages in 36 hours. And if the time elapses, Travella’s recovery team steps in to speed up the process, issuing the sender a full refund while still delivering their package as agreed.

This is the last mile hurdle that remains in Travella’s operations. On Lion’s Den, as a young founder, Ogunranti had shared plans to have Travella’s staff situated at every park to handle hand-offs to the last mile.

Travella established offices in key locations within its operational routes (Ibadan-Lagos, Abuja-Lagos, Ondo-Lagos, and within Lagos), so travellers could drop the items off once they arrived in their destination cities. “We had offices at almost every general interstate motor park, where [we operate]. When you arrive at a particular state, you could just drop your packages in our office, and then we’ll deal with the last-mile delivery based on the options selected by the customer.”

Demands for more flexible, customer-convenient delivery options, however, will see the operational model upgraded come 2026.

According to Ogunranti, these alternative drop-off are currently in the works with plans to go live early in 2026. A wider national reach and groundwork for international logistics are in the pipeline, too.

The goal for Travella remains simple yet ambitious: to become the world’s largest alternative and decentralised delivery system.

*Exchange rate calculated at ₦ 1459.45 per $1 as of the time of publishing.