A lot of people ask us: why not build something that works globally? Why Australia-first?
The honest answer is that Australia is genuinely different from the US and UK, and building for "global" usually means building for San Francisco. The way Australians shop, park, pay, and talk is specific — and getting those specifics wrong means building something that feels like it came from somewhere else.
Australia has some of the most car-centric suburban retail in the world. Westfield car parks are a national institution and a national trauma. But unlike the US, Australian car parks are dense, structured, and often connected to busy inner-city supermarkets where dwell time is brutally optimised.
The "click and collect" model exists overseas, but it is mostly built around drive-throughs in suburban strip malls. The Australian context — tight inner-city car parks, small-format independent grocers, a strong preference for fresh produce — needed its own answer.
Instacart delivers groceries to your door. We do not. Groovo is a collection service, not a delivery service. You drive to the store; the store brings the bags to your boot. This is deliberate.
Delivery requires a fleet of gig workers, surge pricing, and the environmental cost of a van parked in a clearway on Oxford Street. Collection is more efficient, more reliable, and with proper slot management, completely predictable for both the customer and the store.
Afterpay is Australian. It is used differently here than BNPL products in the US. Australians use it for groceries in ways that would surprise American investors. We support Afterpay natively — not as an afterthought.
GST is included in the price, always. No US-style "we will add tax at checkout" — that is not how Australians expect prices to work.
We chose Supabase's Sydney region (AWS ap-southeast-2) from day one. Not for compliance theatre — because it is faster for Australian users, and because your grocery data should not leave the country you are shopping in.
We know what a "global" version of Groovo would look like. USD pricing, delivery-first, US zip code formatting, a support team in a timezone 16 hours off. We have seen that app. It is not what Australia needed.
Building Australia-first meant getting hundreds of small decisions right: AU phone number format (+614XXXXXXXX), suburb-state-postcode address structure, AEST/AEDT timezone handling, Australian Consumer Law in our terms, the OAIC in our privacy policy.
None of these are individually dramatic. Together, they are the difference between a product that feels native and one that feels ported.
— Pawan Dhull, Co-founder and CEO