As a company in the business of rapid grocery delivery, JOKR is no stranger to working at speed. Although only founded in 2021, the startup crossed the $100m annualized revenue run-rate (ARR) mark in under ten months and achieved unicorn status in December of that year.
JOKR’s development teams, located in New York, Tel Aviv, Berlin and São Paolo, extract maximum value from their time by running their operations on Google Cloud and making use of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions whenever they can. “We try to use managed services as much as possible – with the idea in mind that there are people who have these technologies under control, so we don’t need to run them on our own,” explains Jens Wübbenhorst, VP Technology at JOKR.
JOKR’s success pivots on its ability to target customers correctly and deliver a personalized experience via its AI-powered app. The customer opens the JOKR app, enters their address and moves a pin on the Google Map if required to more precisely identify their location, allowing JOKR to present them with the options available in their vicinity. The key to the app’s workflow is provided by Google Maps Platform.
Instant delivery is all about getting the right product to the right destination, fast. This makes it absolutely crucial that Google Maps services are up and running at all times – and that they are performant and accurate. “It is a really vital step right at the beginning of the customer journey when they are entering their location, and also when we are delivering the order,” explains Jens.
To deliver this personalized experience consistently, JOKR uses several Google Maps Platform services including Geocoding API, Place Autocomplete, Mobile Dynamic Maps, Maps Javascript API and Distance Matrix API. The company monitors its costs closely to ensure optimal service spend. However, as a premier service, Google Maps Platform requires considerable expertise to avoid cost overruns and ensure proper optimization.
DoiT had been supporting JOKR with Google Workspace and Looker, but its in-house technical expertise meant that the company was largely independent when it came to running Google Cloud. However, the Google Maps Platform introduced some new complexity for JOKR, and it turned to DoiT for guidance, primarily in the area of performance and cost optimization.
“We received considerable help from Tony Braun (DoiT Location Services Specialist, EMEA) on how to keep the same user experience while spending 25% of the money we spent before,” explains Jens. “Maps usage is still in the top ten of where we spend the most money, but it’s not at the top of the list anymore due to DoiT’s help with cost optimization.”
As well as providing recommendations for cost optimization, DoiT has also helped optimize JOKR’s usage of various Google Maps services, explaining features that documentation alone does not make clear, while also providing advice on how to use them. That guidance extends beyond Google Maps to other Google products, with discussions of options and alternatives that allow JOKR to make sound decisions on their choice of technology. Support is readily available from the DoiT support team, and the JOKR team fully appreciates the DoiT Cloud Management Platform and the support it enables. “In two particularly critical situations, we received support within 20 minutes. That was really helpful,” recalls Jens.
JOKR is currently focusing its energies on the Latin American market, where the market is less mature and operations can be more cost-efficient. As the company focuses on this region, Google has allowed it to achieve global standardization without having to build everything on their own. “Finding the right tools and coming up with meaningful, scalable solutions traffic-wise and cost-wise is one of the big challenges. Google Cloud gives us a broad variety of services, and with DoiT as our partner, we can really make use of them,” Jens says.
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