Hytch Africa, a Nigerian logistics platform that sought to help businesses grow by delivering products to their customers and providing access to loans, has shut down its services completely.
The startup made this announcement via its social media accounts earlier today, explaining that it was a tough decision to close all operations finally.
It’s been a tough one, but we are shutting down operations finally, We would no longer be providing our services to businesses or individuals. We appreciate all our customers and well wishers! We are making a tough decision close operations finally, and will no longer continue to provide services to our customers, the statement reads.
The recent decision by the startup is in trend with the recent unfavourable macroeconomic conditions that have seen many tech startups worldwide terminate the contracts of thousands of employees.
Read also: Meet the 10 Nigerian startups selected for ARM Labs Lagos Techstars Accelerator
Hytch’s recent troubles
Hytch was founded by Laolu Onifade, Femi Omoniyi (CTO), Olawale Adeyeye (Chief Imagineer), and Kemdirim Akujobi (Product and Design Lead) in 2021.
The platform launched to the public as a ride-hailing in May 2022 to help people share rides and move faster and cheaper. According to a TechCabal report, it acquired 600 users in three days without a marketing budget.
However, it suspended its carpooling service last August due to a lack of funding, deciding to become a B2B logistics platform that helps small businesses fulfil their orders nationwide and internationally instead.
Since pivoting to a B2B platform, Hytch sought to enable businesses to serve customers, sell on the internet, and access loans to expand and deliver efficiently. There were plans to partner with African businesses to help them serve customers worldwide and deliver to their customers.
Hytch was active in Lagos and Abuja, and the CEO, Laolu Onifade, explained via a LinkedIn post in late 2022 that the platform was built on reliability and businesses in different sectors were using the system.
“We started with moving people from one place to other, and now we help businesses move products from one place to the other. We are just getting started, really, We have found a product market fit in powering the delivery infrastructure that more and more businesses can rely on,” his post reads.
The financial infrastructure for businesses to receive payments has been built and handled by startups like Paystack, Fluidcoins, Lazerpay, Fincra and Flutterwave plus startups like Bumpa are building an infrastructure for these businesses to sell online and reach global customers.”
This is where Hytch comes to play, powering order fulfilment for merchants and delivering locally and internationally. We are building on reliability which is why businesses in healthcare, ecommerce, fintech etc already use our reliable system.”
However, it seems like this endeavour was not profitable for the Nigerian startup, hence the decision to suspend all services. There has been no further statement from the platform other than the announcement to terminate services across the company’s social media channels.
Read also: Intel slashes executives’ salary by 25% amid PC market downturn
Technext Newsletter
Get the best of Africa’s daily tech to your inbox – first thing every morning.
Join the community now!
