How a billion-dollar Colombian delivery app became a lifeline for Venezuelan migrants

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — If you’ve traveled through any large Latin American city lately you’ve undoubtedly seen Rappi at work.

The tech-driven delivery service, which was founded in Colombia in 2015, is now operating in seven countries and more than 40 cities. It has more than 100,000 delivery people weaving through traffic on bicycles, motorcycles and on foot — easy to see as they tote bright-orange bags emblazoned with a shopkeeper’s mustache.

The company’s premise is simple: Users log in to the Rappi application and can have almost anything they want delivered — restaurant food, toothpaste, cash, groceries.

Last month that straightforward idea got doused with financial rocket-fuel as the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group announced it was plowing up to $1 billion into the company. In the process, Rappi consolidated its status as one of Latin America’s few “unicorns” — billion-dollar startups, which are almost as rare as the mythical creature.

But the company’s meteoric rise (its business grew by 20% every month in 2018) has also been propelled by another less likely source: Venezuelan migrants.

Rappi operates in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru and Uruguay. And while it doesn’t keep track, many of its delivery drivers in the region are Venezuelans who fled their own country’s shattered economy, said Rappi co-founder Sebastian Mejia.

“From day zero at Rappi we’ve always had a social mission,” Mejia, 34, told the Miami Herald. “So we are very excited that Rappi has not only become a source of income for vulnerable communities — like Venezuelan migrants, who are the face of a dramatic humanitarian crisis — but has also given them the ability to send money home.”

Rappi was founded by Mejia, Simon Borrero and Felipe Villamarin, three friends who wanted to find a solution for two problems plaguing Colombian city-dwellers: nightmarish traffic and long office hours. Through the app, Rappi gives users access to a cavalry of personal assistants. But to consider Rappi just a delivery or concierge app is too narrow, Mejia said.

“Rappi is an application where you go to resolve all sorts of problems in your life,” he said.

When SoftBank CEO Marcelo Claure announced the fund’s $1 billion stake in Rappi on April 30, he called the application “the premier multi-service ‘super-app’ for Latin America, improving the lives of millions in the region.”

While the company’s target audience may be the time-starved middle class, it has also become a lifeline for many Venezuelans who have been shut out of the traditional job market.

The United Nations says more than 3.4 million Venezuelans have fled their country in recent years amid a collapsing economy and political turmoil, and most of them are ending up in South America. Colombia alone is now home to more than 1.2 million Venezuelans.

On a recent weekday, four Rappi delivery men were hanging out in front of a grocery store in Colombia’s capital, their bicycles leaning against the wall as they waited for orders to come in on their cellphones. All of them were recent Venezuelan migrants.

Wilander Jimenez, a 28-year-old from the city of Lara, had been a police officer back home. But since arriving in Colombia almost a year ago he hasn’t been able to land a job at a brick and mortar store or as a security guard, even though he has a temporary work permit, known as the PEP.

“People won’t hire you here if you’re Venezuelan, even if you have the PEP,” Jimenez said, “so Rappi has become a solution for many of us.

To work for Rappi, people have to prove they can legally work, take a 45-minute class and have a smartphone. Many start making deliveries on foot or using bicycles before graduating to motorcycles, Jimenez said. On a good day, he can make 75,000 pesos, or about $23 — about three times Colombia’s minimum wage. On a bad day he makes a third of that “or nothing at all.”

Wages fluctuate depending on demand and conditions. On this sunny day in Bogotá, Jimenez was making about $1 per delivery, plus tips. But when it’s raining — as it often does — delivery rates can spike to $2 or $3 dollars per run.

With a bubbly personality and her ability to fake a perfect Colombian accent, Sofia Guerrero seems like she would find a job easily. But she said that as soon as she presents her PEP and Venezuelan passport the doors start closing. She started working at Rappi out of necessity about three months ago and was struck at how it seemed to be a refuge for migrants.

“We’re all Venezuelans,” she said, pointing her chin at about a half-dozen Rappi employees lounging in a park. “Maybe there are some Colombians working for Rappi but I’ve never met one.”

Mejia said it was impossible to know exactly how many Venezuelans work for the company because the organization is seeing such explosive growth. While Rappi had some 20,000 deliverymen in 2018, according to media reports, it now has four times that many.

Even so, he said Venezuelans represented “an important number” of their delivery drivers, particularly in Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Chile — which are also some of the top destinations for Venezuelan migrants.