Raha Is Redefining Grocery Shopping in Port Harcourt

For many Nigerians, grocery shopping is a weekly battle with traffic, long queues, inconsistent prices, and the exhausting back-and-forth of finding everything on a list. Prosper Fredrick, product manager and founder of Raha, knew this struggle too well. His own grocery run meant traveling long distances and spending too much on transportation just to buy essentials. At some point, he realized it didn’t have to be this stressful. That simple insight became the beginning of Raha, a platform designed to make grocery and home-essentials shopping easier for busy professionals who hate the hassle of traditional shopping.

Raha began with a simple WhatsApp model, but the vision was always bigger. The team has now launched Raha V2, a web app that lets people shop from stores closest to them and get everything delivered when they need it. Instead of navigating crowded markets or hopping between supermarkets, users can open the app, browse what they want, and expect delivery within one to three hours depending on their location. Prosper describes the mission as helping people spend less time on chores and more time on what truly matters.

What sets Raha apart is not just convenience, but the system behind it. The team is deeply intentional about how customers experience the product. Every day is split into morning, afternoon, and evening delivery slots, creating a predictable structure and helping them maintain speed and quality. Prosper says this level of discipline ensures the service works smoothly without overpromising.

Quality control is another big part of the story. Vendors are carefully vetted before joining the platform. They go through an onboarding and education process to understand product standards, pricing, and how to manage their digital stores. Riders also inspect items before delivery to maintain consistent quality. For a platform built on trust, every order has to reflect care.

Raha Business expands this trust to vendors as well. In their early version, the team tried managing inventory themselves, but it wasn’t scalable. They quickly pivoted, choosing instead to democratise the marketplace so shops, supermarkets, and market sellers can sign up and sell directly through the app. Vendors gain visibility, more customers, and smart dashboard tools, while Raha handles logistics, discovery, and customer support. Prosper sees it as giving local sellers the digital leverage they’ve never had.

Building trust hasn’t stopped at customers and vendors, it’s also a core internal practice. Customers are constantly checked on, not just when something goes wrong, but to ensure the service works for them. Vendors, many of whom are not tech-savvy, receive hands-on support to navigate the system, upload products, and understand their dashboards. Every successful order reinforces that the model works, and Prosper says the feedback from both sides has been overwhelmingly positive.

Raha has not grown without challenges. The first version gave them access to many customers but lacked operational focus. With V2, they are now rolling out cluster by cluster, starting with the Choba area, gathering feedback, and refining quickly. Logistics has also been a learning curve, but partnering with a reliable delivery provider has improved consistency and speed. And as with any new product, customer hesitation was expected, but every completed delivery has contributed to building trust and credibility.

The next phase for Raha is deliberate expansion, launching more clusters across Port Harcourt, improving vendor onboarding, and continuing to refine the experience based on real-time feedback. The long-term vision remains clear: to redefine how Nigerians shop, offering reliability, quality, and simplicity in a way that feels refreshingly human.

Raha isn’t just a convenience app. It’s a product built with intention, empathy, and a deep understanding of the everyday Nigerian experience. Prosper calls it “a product built with love,” and for households now receiving their groceries with ease, that care is already showing up in every delivery.