OjaExpress wants to make ethnic food more accessible to Chicagoans. And it's catching on with immigrants who want a taste of their hometown, and other culinary curious shoppers, who are gravitating to its online marketplace and delivery service for cultural ingredients.
OjaExpress, founded in 2015 by Boyede Sobitan and Fola Dada, started out as a delivery service for African and Caribbean groceries. The startup has since expanded over the years, offering shoppers Indian, Middle Eastern, Asian, Hispanic and European food items from independent, neighborhood stores.
"We want to be the United Nations of groceries at your fingertips," Sobitan said.
The startup has 10 Chicago stores on its platform, with another 30 agreeing to come online soon, Sobitan said. It's also eyeing additional markets in the future, which could include Washington, D.C. and Houston, he said.
Despite the Covid pandemic, it's been a busy couple of years for OjaExpress, which has run the gauntlet of startup accelerators since 2020. It took part in Chicago's Food Foundry accelerator, was accepted to Kansas City's Techstars program, and was named to SoftBank's first-ever accelerator for underrepresented founders.
"We were kind of accelerator’d out," Sobitan said.
Now, the startup is preparing for growth after raising a pre-seed round of funding, the size of which Sobitan declined to disclose. The startup was bootstrapped up until 2019.
OjaExpress' same-day grocery delivery service allows users to shop by ethnic community or by specific food items, like bread, breakfast or produce. Its marketplace sources items not found in mainstream grocery stores, and works to support mom and pop grocers that don't have the resources to offer delivery services. Stores on its platform include La Fruteria, Rogers Park Fruit Market and Supermercado Sanchez in Cicero.
Dada and Sobitan, who are first and second-generation immigrants from Nigeria, launched OjaExpress out of their own desire to cook the kinds of food they grew up eating. Now, they're helping others get access to ethnic food from one central place.
"We think we can serve as a one stop shop, where you don't have to search different sites to get different products from different cultural communities," Sobitan said. "We have a shop local, eat global mantra."
