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(Note: Mequeo Holdings withdrew its IPO plans in an SEC filing dated Aug. 11, 2023. The F-1 was filed on Dec. 27, 2022.)
Merqueo Holdings is a Cayman Islands-incorporated holding company.
We are Latin America’s first vertically integrated digital grocery retailer with operations in both Colombia and Brazil. We allow our customers to save time and money on groceries by leveraging proprietary technology and operational excellence to deliver groceries at great prices, and in a scalable way. We define a vertically-integrated digital grocery retailer as a full-stack ecosystem which has end-to-end integrated operations, allowing for full control of the value chain. We are laser-focused on becoming the best and most profitable at-home delivery provider of low-price online supermarket products for price-sensitive consumers in Latin America households. Our unique market positioning as a full-stack, high basket size, 100% scheduled delivery option has proven business results, as we have been able to successfully lower distribution and logistics costs, unlock higher margins, and offer best-in-class user experience, cheaper than other grocery retailers.
Through our mobile apps (iOS and Android) customers can satisfy grocery stock up and fill-in shopping missions while saving time and money. Customers no longer have to go to a physical store and are able to benefit from our full stack ecosystem to pay less for the household products that they use and love. We offer everything from fresh produce to frozen products, and from house cleaning and personal hygiene to meat and dairy. Since we also serve countries where cash remains a major form of payment, we offer a wide variety of payment options including cash, online payment, credit and debit card payment upon receipt, vouchers and digital wallets, amongst others.
Technology has always been and continues to be at the heart of Merqueo. We design, develop, and operate most of our software and technology in-house, including (1) user facing mobile apps (iOS and Android), (2) fulfillment center technology (including a picking app, fulfillment center app, and inter-warehouse inventory movement app), (3) last-mile delivery app, and (4) customer service and live operations platforms. See “Full-Stack Grocery Delivery Services’” for a detailed narrative of our technology applied to our business.
Our user-facing platform is a fully-automated, topically-arranged and user-friendly mobile app. It is a highly scalable platform that provides users with a convenient, safe, and trusted shopping environment. This platform enables us to list merchandise and transact with our customers while allowing customers to shop and schedule deliveries digitally. Our grocery platform has an ample assortment of products spanning the full spectrum of grocery needs.
We negotiate and purchase inventory directly from brands, manufacturers, and local farmers. In some specific cases we purchase inventory from distributors. We have invested significant time developing deep relationships and favorable commercial agreements with more than one hundred suppliers. Once we send the purchase orders, our suppliers deliver the inventory to one of our leased warehouses, which we classify into one of two different types: medium warehouses that measure 2,000 to 3,000 meters and large warehouses that measure 4,000 to 5,000 meters. After the incoming product is received and scanned, it is uploaded in real time to Merqueo’s warehouse management system (“WMS”), which immediately updates availability of stock for our users to purchase in our app. In this way, we only display the products that are available to our customers at the time of the purchase, achieving fill rate levels up to 99.6% in Colombia and 98% in Brazil during the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2022.
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