Airlift – Guest Speaker Session
Minutes of the Meeting
What is Airlift?
Started out as a mass-transit business in 2017 but then shifted towards quick commerce after covid-19.
Whatever household essentials that you want, they will come to your place in a properly wrapped
packaging.
 Main aim: leveraging technology to empower millions of Pakistanis. By given the opportunity to
bring you your grocery at home, they are providing you convenience and your time back and
this way they empower you to effectively manage your time.
National Footprint: There are 2 million shops all across Pakistan where consumers have to come and
purchase groceries. However, Airlift now has their own Dark Stores (just like pandamart) where the
customer does not have to visit the store, they can just get items delivered to their place.
Pakistani Landscape: People are digitally connected now and the access to many services are now
within a touch of a button. Right now, 60% of the Pakistanis are under the age of 30 so there are a lot of
job opportunities and potential of bright ideas being implemented.
 The middle income class is the fastest growing segment after India and China
 The labor costs are low.
 The investors have started investing 3x into startups
Three Core categories: These are the three core categories that are digitally disrupting the market
landscape and have huge
 E-Commerce
 FinTech
 Mass Transit
Fly-wheel Impact: This is the domino effect to make your product/service successful into the
mainstream market, where few of the founders and change makers first launch their businesses and
then see that how often they can retain their customers (repeat customers). They hire very
accomplished and competent teams to launch the product and then they are able to secure see-funding
from the investors. The founders have to build the trust among the investors.
How did Airlift start?
Airlift started with a seed-funding, before you validate your pilot, you get funding to validate your model
and to take it to the next level. Airlift has been successful in raising 100 million (1/3 of the total
investment) during the seed funding stage.
Is funding the right way to validate your model? Absolutely not because burning the money is the
easiest thing but the most difficult thing is having a sustainable model of growth for your business.
How to convert people online? Since there is a lack of entertainment in Pakistan, a lot of people enjoy
going to the malls. But once the job of going to the grocery becomes repeated, then a service life quick
commerce is becoming the need of the hour. The important part is to penetrate properly into the
households who then act as semi-brand ambassadors for Airlift and spread word of mouth on behalf of
the company.
Marketing Mix: Airlift
Product/Service: Pivoted from mass-transit to Quick Commerce. The company voews themselves as an
online kiryana or online modern trade store where they do not manufacture anything themselves but
get distributor’s products and then have the service where they sell those products to the customers.
 Service: Providing the same service as LMTs and IMTs but are giving delivery under 30 mins.
 POD: The kind of model that Al-Fatah and Imtiaz have, they will not be able to dilute their own
brick and mortar stores and cannibalize their in stores sales. Also huge modern trade stores do
not have the infrastructure of quick delivery.
 The size of the PIE is huge, so it depends whoever captures the most value. Airlift has first
mover advantage.
 Focusing on customer experience. Addressing the main point of the ecommerce business
which is after sales service.
 Everyone provides vegetables and fruits, how to create differentiation? Airlift decided to
pilot with the sliced fruits and vegetables offer for a niche market and built around these
niche needs of the consumers.
 Products: Consumer app of Airlift, app for the riders and the employees, a warehouse for
the dark stores where they store items, and an infrastructure to interact with manufacturers
and suppliers.
Price: Airlift is currently in the introduction and growth phase where they are translating their low costs
as a discount for the customers. In case of Airlift’s model, all the warehousing etc cost reduces by 3x and
the margin increases 4x.
 You need to see what categories of your products are price elastic and which are price inelastic.
They see for which categories they can match the market price and for which they have to give
prices lower than the market to incentivize.
 Household Income of your customers is a major factor
 Differentiation between male and female
One pain point: the stock fraud activities where the retailers keep an eye on your discount promotions,
make multiple fake accounts and order materials in bulk and then match your price. This is inorganic
demand of the customers for Airlift which is why the company highly discourages this because as soon
as Airlift stops giving discounts, these people will stop buying.
 Remove as many middlemen from the supply chain process. This increases the margins and
reduces the variations in day-to-day activities.
30 mins delivery backend: in top tier cities, you build a mothership and all your warehousing activities
are centered at the mothership whereas there are small outlets within small geography (small polygons
where one rider can deliver seamlessly). Then you make sure the whole supply chain is complementing
the other functions and is effectively able to predict the supple and also monitor the gig economy (rider
base) effectively.
Promotions: How did Airlift changed the perception of their business shift from mass-transit to Quick
commerce? They completely discontinued their mass-transit business, surveyed people and only 7%10% people still associated Airlift with mass-transit. After this, they used Above the Line marketing
strategies and other mass-medium to penetrate the top of the mind of people through radio, television
and other online medium.
In terms of marketing, these are the important factors:
 They need to be fast in implementation.
 They run pilot for every single medium and see if they are working or not.
 Airlift quantify every single result from their marketing activities. They make their own KPIs and
then measure the impact of these core marketing activities (internal and external visibility)
You need to implement the following steps:
 Identify what your core TG is. You need to pinpoint the age, profession and SEC of these people.
Their status in personal life. They identified age (18-35), if they are working class or not, if they
are married or not. Airlift identifies the niche needs of each of these people in the TG. What are
the pain points of married housewives, what are the pain points of working class?
 Your positioning should not be in terms of the functional benefit (30 mins delivery) because this
is easily imitable and any other brand can come and copy this. So it must be something that
derives emotional value and not functional.
 Brand Promises: focus on one core promise or RTB (reason to Believe) your brand and then work
on delivering upon that promise. Currently Airlift’s promise is of ‘saving customers time and
convenience’ and the reason to believe this promise is their claim of ‘30 mins delivery’.
 Brand Equity: creating brand power (MDS Framework)
 Is your brand meaningful to the consumer? Meaningfulness
 Are your product offering relevant to the brand? Relevance
 Is it in the top of the mind responses of the consumers or not? Salience
 TV is the most penetrated medium but it is very costly, billboard penetration is 40% but it is
ineffective. The focus of Airlift is hugely towards digital media because that is the earned and
owned media for any startup brand.
Way Forward: Currently Airlift is battling the challenge of launching new verticals in Pakistan and also
expanding the Airlift business globally.