Postmates looking to launch in Canada and UK
Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann has announced that the on-demand delivery company is planning to expand beyond its US base in 2016. The company can handle a range of delivery services, but food-to-go from restaurants is its core business.
Speaking at the TechCrunch Disruption conference in London earlier this week, Lehmann said that the company is looking to launch in Canada in the first quarter (Q1) and then set up an operation in the UK capital at the end of Q1 or earlier Q2.
In a wide-ranging on-stage interview held on the conference stage, Lehmann wouldn’t be drawn on where the next launch site would be after this.
When inviting to comment on other European cities, he said that Berlin and Paris would probably not work with Postmates’ current model.
“But London, I know for sure will work,” said Lehmann. pparently, one of the key factors in making the Postmates model work is having sufficient “scale” – and London delivers well on this criterion. Bastian did, however, acknowledge that Deliveroo is likely to be a tough competitor.
Looking farther afield, Lehmann said that Asia was a hard market to break into, and he felt that Postmates would probably have to work through partnerships if it were to take on this challenge. “Asia is so difficult, Uber has huge problems there, Google doesn’t fully understand it,” Lehmann added.
