Shared platform, city-level execution
Sebastian Mejia, co-founder of Rappi, on building for multi-verticality in on-demand
This reveals that Rappi is trying to scale like one company while operating like a hundred city businesses. The central team builds the shared machinery, product, data science, capital allocation, and operating tools, while city teams decide how to win block by block, merchant by merchant. That matters because food, grocery, pharmacy, and courier supply all behave differently in Bogotá, Mexico City, and São Paulo, even inside one regional brand.
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The local team model is not just about sales autonomy. In on-demand, city leaders need to tune pricing, courier supply, merchant onboarding, and promotions to local conditions, because network effects are built at the city level, not across Latin America as a whole.
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The central brain exists because multi-vertical delivery needs shared infrastructure. One app, one logistics layer, common data systems, and common product tools let Rappi add groceries, restaurants, pharmacy, payments, and dark kitchens without rebuilding the stack in every market.
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This is also how Rappi tries to copy the Meituan playbook without copying China blindly. Meituan won with strong city execution and merchant coverage, while Rappi pairs that local execution with a regional platform that can cross-sell categories and improve order density over time.
Going forward, this structure should become even more important as Rappi pushes deeper into payments, advertising, and more vertically integrated fulfillment. The more products sit on top of one shared operating system, the more value comes from local teams that can adapt the playbook quickly while feeding data and demand back into the central platform.