Jungle Connect Ft. Eugene D., Co-Founder, Tupuca

“Third World countries are not an ideal place to target for a business!”

Oftentimes, we’ve heard organisations say that, focusing on only the Cons but Eugene Dannilenko & his startup Tupuca is a testimony to what potential Angola holds. 

Here’s how!  

Eugene Danilenko, Co-Founder of, Tupuca is all things interesting as a person. A man of many hats & passions, Eugene graduated from a medical college in hopes to make it big as a medical professional. After a short stint of working as a paramedic in Omsk, Siberia in 1997, he decide to switch his career path. This switch can be accredited to meagre pay and the long hours he had to put in as a paramedic. 

The switch then took him to work a ground-level job as a warehouse worker, the job while a bit unsatisfactory for an educated medical professional proved to be monetarily rewarding. His corporate life then took off and he worked his way up to managerial positions in prestigious MNC’s.  

In 2009, he finally decide to leave his corporate job for good and moved to New Zealand on a student Visa. This move, while much-needed, offered him a way to pursue his IT studies but he did struggle to settle in the geographical space. 

One thing led to another, and a few geographical changes later, he found himself moving to Tanzania and finally settling in Angola. That’s where he saw the maximum potential to grow and started his own business with his partners called Tupuca, an on-demand food delivery platform. Tupuca essentially means an urge to eat something in the local language and considering food delivery was the only focus, in the beginning, it all made sense.  

But considering the street food culture in Angola is still pretty low key, they targetted only the restaurants which led to a very niche target audience. So, they decided to branch out to groceries, medicine delivery, toys, clothing etc. As of 2016, Tupuca was the only successfully running on-demand food delivery application in Angola. 

PRO’s of operating in Angola 

• No-to-less competitors: When Eugene & his partners decided to start Tupuca, there were no competitors. 
• Market Monopoly: Being the first in the industry, they were able to create a monopoly and capture a large chunk of their target audience. 

CON’s of operating Angola

• Offline Business Ecosystem: A large chunk of the population still operates Offline and is not comfortable is online transactions. 
• Lack of payment getaways & online payment options. 

Now, there’s much more Eugene & Samar share about capturing a third world country in the podcast below. 

Tune in and learn more!