Ninja Van eyes expansion in hard-to-reach areas

April 17, 2024 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — Express courier Ninja Van Philippines plans to widen its presence outside Metro Manila, as it wants to capture the growing demand for e-commerce deliveries as far as Mindanao.

Ninja Van Philippines country head Jose Alvin Perez told reporters that one of the company’s objectives for the year is to increase the volume of its last-mile deliveries in rural areas.

Ninja Van delivers up to 500,000 parcels on certain days, especially when e-commerce pioneers Lazada and Shopee give out promos to bring prices down.

However, Perez said that e-commerce demand in areas as far as Sulu is also growing, and Ninja Van sees room to expand. For instance, Ninja Van operates a fleet of five riders in Bongao Island in Tawi-Tawi, one of the southernmost municipalities of the Philippines.

Perez said consumers from the island, like in the rest of the archipelago, buy some of their needs online.

For businesses, this means they no longer have to build warehouses in far-flung locations, as they can rely on the last mile service of Ninja Van to reach islands like Bongao.

“You don’t have to set up your own warehouse there. We can send it to you. You can have daily deliveries going to your locations there and you don’t have to invest in a big retail space,” Perez said.

Recently, Ninja Van entered business-to-business delivery through a new service called Ninja Restock, marking its expansion outside of the e-commerce vertical.

Despite this, Perez expects the e-commerce segment to remain as the largest source of revenue for Ninja Van, as Filipinos show no sign of moderating their online purchases. Ninja Van traces the bulk of its daily deliveries to Metro Manila, Cebu and Davao.

Ninja Van Philippines chief commercial officer Sabina Lopez-Vergara said beauty items account for the bulk of e-commerce shipments. She also observed that Filipinos are becoming more and more confident ordering pharmaceutical products online.

In 2023 Ninja Van opened a new warehouse in Cabuyao, Laguna that can process around 15,000 parcels a day, boosting its capacity to serve the last-mile requirements in the Philippines.

In the country, Ninja Van operates a fleet of about 8,000 drivers on two wheels, three wheels and four wheels who deliver packages across the archipelago.