Spanish multi-category platform, Glovo, is turning Kenya into a proving ground for a broader reinvention of its business, using the country’s dense cities, informal retail networks, and deep tech talent to test how urban commerce may evolve across emerging markets.
- •In an interview with The Kenyan Wall Street, the company’s co-founder, Sacha Michaud, said that the market has shifted from an uncertain frontier into a strategic hub shaping its global model.
- •The company has positioned the country as a regional hub, not only for managing its East African business but also for supporting operations across more than 20 countries where it operates.
- •Nairobi is being developed into a center for operational support and customer service functions, part of a broader shift toward embedding core capabilities in African markets, as Glovo bets on the country's pro-investment strategy and talent density.
“The talent of people here is super high bar, it’s like second to none. A perfect example of that is Shiro Theuri, our CTO. We hired her in Kenya. She became a senior director of engineering at Glovo now. She manages over 700 people. That’s one thing I’ve been super impressed with in Kenya, the talent here. And that just shows that there’s gonna be some amazing companies created by Kenyan entrepreneurs for sure,” Michaud told The Kenyan Wall Street during the inauguration of Glovo’s Nairobi office and the marking of six years of operations in the country.
When Glovo first entered Kenya, much of the supply side it needed to function did not exist in digital form. Many merchants were still offline, consumer behavior was untested, and the viability of everyday on-demand delivery was unclear. The company was forced to build both sides of its marketplace simultaneously; bringing small businesses online while cultivating daily usage among consumers in a market still early in its digital transition.
“It was about getting them online, but also seeing whether they were ready to sell online and whether consumers were ready to use a product like Glovo every day. So there were many unknowns coming into a market that, at the time, was not very mature and was still evolving. But luckily, the local team really adapted the product to the country and to the cities where we operate,” Sasha Michaud said.
That early ambiguity has since given way to a structure that is now influencing Glovo’s operations beyond Kenya. The company adapted its product locally by adjusting to city dynamics, merchant capabilities, and consumer habits. This has made the company scale rapidly, with the Kenyan business emerging as one of its most developed in Africa.
Glovo's Foothold, and Expansion
At the core of that evolution is the platform’s deep integration with small businesses. Roughly 80% of the more than 6,000 merchants on Glovo in Kenya are small and medium-sized enterprises, many of which had no prior online presence. The platform has effectively become a digitisation layer for informal and semi-formal retail, enabling thousands of businesses to access online demand without building their own infrastructure.
That transformation is reshaping the nature of the business itself. While food delivery remains the largest category, Glovo’s fastest-growing segment in Kenya is what it terms “quick commerce”, a broad basket of non-restaurant goods including groceries, electronics, pharmacy items, and everyday convenience products. The category now accounts for about 40% of its Kenyan operations, far outpacing its penetration in other markets, where it typically represents closer to 10%.
Glovo is also expanding beyond its consumer-facing marketplace into enterprise logistics, opening up its courier network to businesses that want to move goods across cities without going through the app interface. The service allows companies to plug directly into Glovo’s delivery infrastructure, using its riders to transport parcels, documents and inventory between locations or to customers.
“We have a corporate service called ‘On Demand’. Basically, any company can plug into our courier service and use it as a courier. We’re already doing that and offering that service to many businesses. So many businesses are delivering things either to consumers or across the city, not going through our app but plugging into our platform,” Michaud stated.
While Nairobi remains the most mature market in the country, Glovo is recording a strong 65% growth in secondary cities such as Mombasa. Consumer behavior in these cities largely mirrors the capital, though adoption tends to lag due to a familiar constraint: fewer established merchants and less developed digital ecosystems. The result is a supply-led growth curve, where expansion depends as much on onboarding quality partners as it does on consumer demand.
That strategy is underpinned by what Michaud described as a combination of regulatory openness and talent density. Kenya’s pro-investment posture has enabled sustained capital deployment over the past six years, while its workforce has begun feeding into the company’s global structure.
Glovo's AI Play
The interplay between infrastructure gaps and digital capability is also driving how Glovo is deploying artificial intelligence. The company already uses algorithmic systems to coordinate one of its most complex tasks of matching customer orders with merchants and couriers in real time while predicting preparation times and optimizing delivery routes. Even marginal gains, measured in seconds, translate into higher courier productivity, improved merchant throughput and a smoother customer experience.
AI is also being integrated into customer support, where automated systems are expected to handle routine queries while human agents manage more complex issues. On the consumer side, the company is exploring predictive interfaces that can anticipate repeat behavior, enabling users to reorder items with minimal friction while preserving the discovery-driven nature of the app.
“The app will automatically detect what I ordered two weeks ago and just order it, and I don’t have to go through the menu and everything. But I think discovery will still be a very important part of our app. Looking through the different partners, restaurants and stores, choosing the menu, I don’t think that will go away, it will just be enhanced by AI,” Michaud added.
Glovo’s positioning of Kenya as a regional hub is being reinforced by strong operating metrics and expanding ecosystem reach. The company reported 40% year-on-year growth in 2025, alongside a 70% increase in SME participation, with 150 businesses supported through its Glovo Academy program.
The progress amplifies Kenya’s role not just as a consumption market but as an operational and innovation base, where platform-led logistics, SME digitisation and urban demand are converging into a scalable model for other African markets.
