A New Chapter: From Delivery to Vendor Operations
Chowdeck, one of Nigeria’s fastest-growing on-demand delivery startups, has acquired Mira, a one-year-old restaurant management and point-of-sale platform, in a deal that signals a strategic evolution in the company’s business model. Though the financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, Chowdeck CEO Femi Aluko described it as a move to strengthen the company’s role in supporting the back-end operations of its vendors — especially restaurants, supermarkets, and pharmacies.
“For a long time, we’ve focused more on the customer side than on the restaurant, supermarket, and pharmacy side,” Aluko said in an interview with Techpoint Africa. “But as we begin to expand, we’re paying deeper attention to the vendor side.”
Why Mira? A Natural Fit for Vertical Integration
Founded by Ted Oladele, a former VP of Design at Flutterwave, Mira offers a comprehensive platform for food businesses. It enables customers to scan QR codes for menu browsing, place orders, and complete payments. On the backend, it equips restaurant owners with tools for inventory management, sales tracking, and customer engagement — areas where Chowdeck has historically lacked deep product offerings.
This acquisition allows Chowdeck to go beyond logistics and extend its control over the food value chain, transitioning from a pure delivery service to an infrastructure provider for small and mid-sized food businesses. In addition to its software, Mira also sells hardware point-of-sale systems priced at ₦360,000. Over 500 businesses are currently active on its platform.
“We are thrilled to welcome Mira to the Chowdeck family,” Aluko said. “I’ve admired their work for a long time, and I’m excited about what we can build together.”
Following the deal, Oladele will join Chowdeck as Head of Product, bringing along select team members from Mira to enhance Chowdeck’s business tools tailored for food and hospitality operators.
Scaling Beyond Delivery in a Competitive Market
Launched in 2021, Chowdeck has made a name for itself in Nigeria’s on-demand ecosystem, serving over a million users with more than 3,000 delivery riders across eight cities. Recently, it entered Ghana through Accra, where it’s set to complete 1,000 deliveries in just two months — a milestone it took nearly a year to achieve in Nigeria.
However, the startup is not operating in isolation. Global competitors like Glovo have entered African markets, bringing with them resources and brand recognition. In response, Chowdeck appears to be making a deliberate pivot — not to diversify, but to deepen its value proposition by vertically integrating services and tightening its hold on vendor operations.
By acquiring Mira, Chowdeck gains the ability to serve the same food businesses it delivers for in a more holistic way — from order fulfilment to back-office operations. This could potentially help it establish a deeper, more defensible relationship with vendors who are looking for a one-stop tech solution.
The Challenges of Enterprise Software
Still, the shift into enterprise software brings a new set of challenges. Selling delivery is transactional; selling software is relationship-driven. The process involves longer sales cycles, deeper product integrations, and a demand for continuous support — an operational leap that few Nigerian startups have successfully scaled.
Chowdeck will now need to grow its internal product, support, and engineering teams to meet the demands of this new market segment. Yet it holds a key advantage: a large, built-in network of restaurant partners who already trust the brand’s logistics reliability. This existing distribution and goodwill could ease the path to adoption of Mira’s tools under the Chowdeck umbrella.
A Bigger Vision: Supply Chain Reimagined?
Chowdeck's ambitions appear to extend beyond food delivery. The platform also facilitates grocery and pharmaceutical logistics, and its acquisition of Mira raises questions about how far it intends to push into the operational fabric of its vendors.
If the company now views itself as a long-term technology partner to restaurants, pharmacies, and supermarkets — not just a delivery intermediary — it could gradually reposition itself as a central player in digitizing and streamlining fragmented supply chains across Africa.
The Mira acquisition may be the first in a series of steps aimed at reimagining how small and mid-sized vendors manage inventory, engage customers, and scale in an increasingly competitive, tech-driven market. If executed well, Chowdeck could evolve from a delivery startup into a cornerstone of Africa’s digital retail infrastructure.