This company delivers groceries to immigrants looking to cook traditional foods

For immigrants who live in the U.S., getting the food of their native country just right often requires cooking at home. The trouble can be finding the ingredients.
Adeniyi Olutayo, the founder of Nigeria-based Nultan Group (the company behind the “Netflix of Nollywood“), found this out firsthand when he came to the U.S. recently.
“His family was clamoring for him to bring Nigerian ingredients,” said Mabel Imala, who is CEO of Manassas, Va.-based Nultan USA.
Over the summer, Nultan launched a service that’s designed to help make the effort to get groceries from other parts of the world less cumbersome.
The service, called Deeskus, delivers African, Latin American and Caribbean foods from international grocery stores in the U.S. via online ordering and independent contractors.
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The first partner stores for Deeskus (pronounced like “discuss”) are a group of five stores in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia, including Baltimore City, said Imala. (She declined to name the stores.) This area is not among the places in the U.S. where the need for a store that sells the goods is highest, Imala said. But it’s proving to be a test market for on-demand delivery, as well as shipping.
For customers in the metro area, Deeskus works like Instacart. The company’s software arranges to fulfill the order from the store, and goods like Bobolo Odevi (pre-cooked cassava stick) and beef oxtail are delivered by independent contractors on the same day. Orders that total more than $30 get free shipping.

For customers who live outside the area, Deeskus offers two-day priority shipping. That’s where the largest need is being shown.
“The greatest response so far has been from outside the D.C. area,” Imala said.
While it’s already making customers in places like Arizona happy, Imala said the company is working to find stores in other areas with high immigrant populations and low numbers of grocery stores to cut down on shipping costs.
While companies like Instacart and Peapod are already offering online grocery delivery, Deeskus is looking to deliver products that aren’t offered in the American-focused stores those services rely on. In turn, most ethnic food suppliers don’t yet offer such a delivery service, Imala said.
“We are the Instacart for this minority population,” Imala said in a release.