Meet Nikhil Goel, the New CEO of Gokada

Nigeria-based last-mile delivery startup, Gokada has appointed Nikhil Goel as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Geol’s position as the head of the company was officially confirmed today after he took over the responsibility of leading the startup following the tragic passing of its founder, Fahim Saleh in July 2020.

In his new position, Goel will be responsible for growing and expanding the startup into new geographies and verticals.

Speaking on the startups new business model, Nikhil Goel revealed that Gokada now serves thousands of individuals and businesses across Lagos.

“Our range of delivery solutions now spans a number of sectors such as food delivery, grocery delivery, parcel delivery, eCommerce fulfilment, and more,” he said.

With a growing fleet of over 1,000 pilots and thousands of SME customers, Gokada plans to expand across other states in Nigeria in 2021.

He added that even in the midst of the pandemic they were able to bring most of their pilots back to jobs. They were also able to launch reliable logistics solutions to support businesses in Nigeria thus allowing them to continue providing their services to their customers.

Meet Nikhil Goel

Goel assumes his role as Gokada CEO years after joining Gokada in 2019 as a Vice President of Rides.

During his time at the startup, he has helped the company massively increase its revenue while significantly growing it’s delivery order volume even after its major ride-hailing operations were banned in Lagos.

This has enabled Gokada to reach profitability in the past 12 months, according to the company.

Before joining Gokada, Goel served in different capacities in the logistics and food delivery industry in Africa and across the world.

He started his career as an intern at IIIT New Dehli before moving on to Broadcom in December 2012. Goel served as an Engineer Software Development in the company in 2015.

Mid year 2015, he co-founded Dropcalorie, a company that partnered with the owner of an existing cafe, Chaipatty to open a new branch and created a healthy food menu along with the existing menu catering to health food.

In early 2016, he started Classplus and served as the Chief Operating Officer for 3 years. He then moved on to General Manager of Zomato in 2018 and Social Innovation Management Fellow of BRCK in late 2018.

Goel then joined SafeBoda as the Head of New Verticals in 2019, where he created an innovative food delivery option to provide the best convenience to people across Kenya and empower small food merchants across cities.

Educational Background

Goel has a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology. He then received a Postgraduate degree in Social Innovation Management from Amani Institute located in Nairobi, Sao Paulo and Bengaluru.

Asides his education, he has also volunteered for several NGO’s including Kriti and Making A Difference.

Summary

As the new boss of Gokada, Goel is bringing with him extensive experience in the global last-mile logistics and food delivery space.

The startup has surmounted the challenges of the okada ban and the EndSars’ protests in October 2020 and is now leveraging on Goel’s strong track record to expand into new parts of the country.