Chowdeck bets local food delivery can be profitable in Lagos: $9M Series A, 1.5M customers

Lagos delivery startup Chowdeck stayed profitable while rivals retreated; $9M Series A in 2025 funds Ghana and quick commerce

Chowdeck

它在赌什么That disciplined, city-by-city expansion and local meals could make food delivery profitable in Nigeria while global players burned cash or retreated.在扩

做的是什么生意

Chowdeck is an on-demand food delivery app in Nigeria and Ghana, delivering restaurant meals, groceries, and essentials in about 30 minutes.

启动资金：$2.5 million seed (2024), then $9 million Series A (2025)

起因

Femi Aluko, a former Paystack backend engineer, caught COVID on New Year's Eve 2020 and could not find food delivery during the holiday; he launched Chowdeck in October 2021 with two Paystack co-founder friends.

报道Chowdeck YC launch

经过

By mid-2022 it hit 650 daily orders and 60,000 total deliveries; in 2024 meal value grew more than sixfold, and in 2025 it passed that total before July. It entered Ghana in May 2025 and acquired POS provider Mira in June.

结果

Still running and scaling: profitable before and after its $9 million Series A, operating in 11 cities across Nigeria and Ghana with 1.5 million customers and 20,000 riders, planning 40 dark stores by end-2025 and 500 by end-2026.

新闻Series A coverage

背景

Chowdeck was founded in Lagos in October 2021 by Femi Aluko, Olumide Ojo, and Lanre Yusuf. Aluko had worked as a backend principal engineer at Paystack, and the origin story is personal: stuck with COVID over New Year 2021, he found no working food delivery in Lagos. The founders started in two neighbourhoods, Ikeja and Yaba, and by July 2022 were processing 650 daily orders with an average delivery time under 30 minutes.

The company deliberately avoided the burn-heavy playbook of global delivery apps. Aluko says Chowdeck was profitable before its Series A and only enters cities or verticals it plans to break even in within a couple of weeks. In 2024 the value of meals delivered grew more than sixfold; in 2025 Chowdeck passed the full-year 2024 total before July. It entered Ghana in May 2025 and hit 1,000 daily orders there within three months, without paid advertising.

In August 2025 it raised a $9 million Series A led by Novastar Ventures, with Y Combinator and others participating, to roll out quick commerce via dark stores and to expand across Nigeria and Ghana. At the time it operated in 11 cities with 1.5 million customers and more than 20,000 riders, and had acquired Mira, a POS provider, in June to add restaurant software to its logistics business.

这件事要成立，得有什么

Local meals are operationally harder to deliver but harder for global platforms to copy well.
Profitability per city disciplined where the company spent, unlike rivals that scaled on subsidies.
Aluko, Ojo, and Yusuf brought payments-era execution experience from Paystack.
YC and Novastar capital came after the model was already profitable, not before.

可借鉴之处

In a market where global delivery giants lost money and left, Chowdeck won by treating profitability per city as a gate: expand only where break-even is plausible within weeks.

后续进展

As of August 2025, Chowdeck is profitable, operating across 11 cities in Nigeria and Ghana with 1.5 million customers and over 20,000 riders, and averaging 30-minute deliveries. The $9 million Series A funds quick commerce: 40 dark stores by end-2025 and 500 by end-2026, plus further city expansion, with a stated ambition to become Africa's number one super app.

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