Simbisa Brands, the Zimbabwean company behind Pizza Inn, Chicken Inn, Galito's, Creamy Inn and Bakers' Inn, has taken full ownership of Kutuma Kenya, its in-house delivery operation, paying KES 85.8 million (about $664,000) for the remaining 25% stake it did not already hold. The deal closed by end of June, and the timing makes sense: delivery now accounts for 27.4% of Simbisa's Kenyan turnover, up from 21.7% the year before.
Kutuma is not simply a last-mile arm for the group's fast-food chains. It already runs three separate operations: Dial a Delivery for Simbisa's own brands, Yum for restaurants and grocery stores across Nairobi, and Swyft for business deliveries. Full ownership gives Simbisa the freedom to build Kutuma into a proper marketplace, pulling in outside merchants alongside its own restaurants to keep riders busier and bring the cost per delivery down.
That ambition puts Kutuma in direct competition with Glovo, Uber Eats and Bolt Food, but Simbisa walks in with something those platforms had to build from scratch: a guaranteed flow of orders from 257 outlets already on its books in Kenya. The company completed 3.23 million deliveries in the country during the year to June, up from 2.03 million the previous year, a 59% jump in delivery orders against overall customer volume growth that was four times slower.
Kenya's delivery market also has a visible gap to fill. Jumia Food exited in December 2023, and a 2024 Competition Authority of Kenya study found that roughly 85% of retailers surveyed held no exclusive agreement with any delivery platform. That means most restaurants and shops are free to list wherever they like, which is exactly the kind of opening Kutuma is positioning itself to capture.
Originally published by TechCabal.