Topship (YC W22) : send and receive items globally.

Overview

Topship revolutionizes African businesses' global logistics, offering a seamless solution for exporting and importing cargo, freight, and parcels to suppliers, distributors, and customers worldwide. Topship simplifies the entire process, making it easier for users to send and receive items from their doorstep to any location across the globe. With Topship, African businesses can now expand their reach and confidently navigate international trade.

Topship was a part of the Y Combinator winter 2022 batch and has successfully completed 20,000 shipments with over a thousand paying customers. Topship has since raised $3 million in funding from investors like Flexport, YC, among others.

The Problem

I played a key role in addressing a concerning churn rate that we identified through user feedback and data analysis. To solve this challenge, I conducted interviews with several users, delving deep into their experience using the platform and gathering valuable insights.

Collaborating closely with the team, we engaged in brainstorming sessions to explore innovative ways to enhance user retention and provide even more value to businesses utilizing our platform to ship products. Through these collaborative efforts, we sought to create a seamless and delightful experience that would encourage long-term engagement and loyalty.

This research and findings informed the design of some recent product offerings.

The Opportunity

Create a win-win situation for businesses and Topship by building out features to incentivize businesses to ship more products using Topship.

Offer businesses more value at a lower cost and a lower shipment rate.

Very Important Business (VIB) Feature

The "VIB" (Very Important Business) feature emerged as a promising idea to address our retention rate, boost user adoption, and deliver added value to our users. This aimed to incentivize users to ship more products, creating a win-win situation for both businesses and Topship. By implementing the VIB feature, we sought to recognize and reward our most valuable users, acknowledging their loyalty and frequent usage of our platform. Through this special status, VIB users would enjoy exclusive benefits, such as discounted shipment rates, priority support, and access to low-interest business loans.





Topship for Logistics

The team collaboratively developed the logistics dashboard feature. This dashboard allows businesses to have greater control over their shipping processes, enhancing their overall customer experience. Through this, businesses can easily set and manage their shipping prices, they can also share their shipping prices with customers to ensure transparency.

Additionally, the dashboard empowers businesses to set up custom SMS and email notifications for their customers, offering real-time updates on the status of products shipped. This personalized approach enhances customer satisfaction and reinforces trust in the brand.





Impact

Since the launch, Topship has successfully raised over $2.5 million in a series A funding round.

Through our diligent efforts and strategic design enhancements, we successfully achieved a remarkable decrease in churn rate and an increase of over 40% in the retention rate.

Since the launch of these new product offerings, Topship has experienced a remarkable 30% increase in the adoption rate of new users to the platform.

Today, Topship has hit a milestone with over 1000+ paying customers and a remarkable track record of completing 20,000+ shipments across 200+ cities worldwide.