Lite e-Commerce: Powering personalized grocery shopping with a future-proof platform
About Lite e-Commerce
Lite e-Commerce aims to build cutting-edge technology to make consumers’ lives easier and more efficient. Based in Poland, the company currently employs more than 140 people and serves four major cities with two online grocery delivery platforms that seek to meet consumers’ specific needs and preferences.
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Contact usTo provide people in major Polish cities with fast, efficient and effortless online grocery shopping experiences, Lite e-Commerce grounds its solutions in a stable, modular platform developed by Google Cloud.
Google Cloud results
- Streamlined collaboration for a brand new development team with an intuitive, user-friendly platform
- Provides a stable, modular basis for future growth with Google Kubernetes Engine
- Automates data analysis and provides valuable insights with Looker
Supported a successful platform launch in four months
Online grocery sales boomed in 2020 and 2021 as consumers sought new ways to shop during the COVID pandemic. And this trend shows every sign of continuing. Convenience remains a major driver, alongside better prices, variety, and access to healthier options. Lite e-Commerce, founded in June 2021, is an online grocery company with the aim of helping people spend more time on meaningful experiences with their loved ones. "Let’s say you have your mom round for coffee and you suddenly realize you’re out of milk. There’s no need to run to the store, we can get a carton to you in under 15 minutes," says Kamil Bakowski, Marketing & eCommerce Director, Lite e-Commerce.
In under a year, Lite e-Commerce launched two online platforms aimed at streamlining the grocery shopping and delivery experience. To support a rapid launch and ground their solutions in a stable platform with room for growth, the company turned to Google Cloud.
"Our aim was to launch within three or four months, and with that kind of timeline our main driver was developer-friendliness and speed of implementation. We found Google Cloud to be the quickest and easiest cloud platform to build solutions that take into account future growth."
—Zbigniew Sobiecki, Chief Technical Officer, Lite e-CommerceDriving a quick, efficient launch
"Our aim was to launch within three or four months, and with that kind of timeline our main driver was developer-friendliness and speed of implementation," says Zbigniew Sobiecki, Chief Technical Officer, Lite e-Commerce. "We found Google Cloud to be the quickest and easiest cloud platform to build solutions that take into account future growth."
Lite e-Commerce is owned by the Żabka Group, a major Polish convenience store brand that invests heavily in digital and semi-digital shopping experiences, such as partially-automated, cashierless "nanostores." "With Lite e-Commerce, we really want to expand on the idea of utmost convenience for the consumer," Bakowski explains. The company’s first product, Jush!, an app that enables shoppers to order and receive their products in under 15 minutes, was launched in just four months. The second, delio, which allows people to order and receive their weekly shop within one working day, went live just five months later.
Both platforms were built from scratch, something Lukasz Gaweda, Chief Digital Officer, Lite e-Commerce, considers a blessing: "The fact we had no legacy infrastructure to deal with was one of the reasons we were able to launch so quickly." However, this also meant a brand new development team. "We needed a technology provider that developers would be familiar with, which was one of the reasons we opted for Google Cloud," Sobiecki says. "Plenty of data engineers and talent are experienced with it. And for those who aren’t, Google Cloud CLI is really straightforward, the documentation is well thought out and it’s easy to get accustomed to the new environment."
"After careful thought, we decided Looker was the right choice for us as a data-based business. It’s a great platform for fast-growing companies with smaller business intelligence teams that want to explore their data in depth."
—Lukasz Gaweda, Chief Digital Officer, Lite e-CommercePowering rapid growth with a stable, scalable platform
"When we started out, we weren’t just thinking about our immediate needs, but also the kinds of products we’d like to develop in the future and how our scope would change," Gaweda says. "The Google team was really helpful about letting us try the platform out and make sure it was right for us."
Lite e-Commerce’s infrastructure is microservice-based, with 12 clusters managed via Google Kubernetes Engine. "We’re 100% Google Kubernetes Engine. Each data environment has its own dedicated cluster, Pub/Sub enables integration between services, and we’re using Cloud SQL with some PostgreSQL and MySQL instances and Memorystore," Gaweda says. "From a data engineering perspective, we went for BigQuery. We built the platform in order to enable us to add further services quickly and easily and expand our offer in the future." Safeguarding customer data is another priority for Lite e-Commerce. Identity and Access Management enables the team to audit and manage access to specific resources for team members and in order to connect securely to its network of dark stores, the company uses Cloud VPN.
Lite e-Commerce powers some of its location-based services with Google Maps solutions, including Geocoding, Reverse Geocoding, and Places APIs. "We’re location driven, so Maps is a big part of our build," Sobiecki says. "We’re currently working on a feature that enables you to order from anywhere, without an actual address. For example, you could order some soda and chips while sitting on a riverbank with your friends."
"Stability and scalability are the most important things for us," Gaweda says. "We’re growing very fast in terms of users, data, and even physical locations. We’re excited to see what Google Cloud can offer in terms of intelligent solutions, which will help us offer our customers more personalized and convenient options."
"Google Cloud means stability, collaboration and a solid basis for our future projects. We don't know exactly what the future will bring, but we reckon Google Cloud will make it easier and faster to get there."
—Lukasz Gaweda, Chief Digital Officer, Lite e-CommerceLooking towards a more personalized, data-driven future
"After careful thought, we decided Looker was the right choice for us as a data-based business. It’s a great platform for fast-growing companies with smaller business intelligence teams that want to explore their data in depth," Gaweda says. The Lite e-Commerce team is working with Google Cloud to further develop their analytics work, and they have already started looking at how they can make their environments increasingly intelligent and AI driven. "We’re interested in developing recommendations. At this point, our customers mainly use the search function to look for specific products, and we’re interested in helping them go beyond that to discover the full range of what Jush! and delio have to offer. For this, we’ll be exploring Recommendations AI," Gaweda explains.
Jush! is currently available in the Polish cities: Warsaw, Gdansk, Piaseczno, Katowice, and Krakow. While delio is available in Warsaw, Piaseczno, and Konstancin. Both services are planning to expand into further cities and regions. Lite e-Commerce is also interested in improving the delivery experience for customers by bringing additional functionality to fleet management aspects. As the company scales, it aims to focus more on optimizing its fleets so its customers get their groceries faster, and it’s looking at using Last Mile Fleet Solution.
"Google Cloud means stability, collaboration and a solid basis for our future projects," says Gaweda. "We don't know exactly what the future will bring, but we reckon Google Cloud will make it easier and faster to get there."
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About Lite e-Commerce
Lite e-Commerce aims to build cutting-edge technology to make consumers’ lives easier and more efficient. Based in Poland, the company currently employs more than 140 people and serves four major cities with two online grocery delivery platforms that seek to meet consumers’ specific needs and preferences.