How the first LatAm SuperApp achieved 300% order growth while cutting delivery costs by 42%

• Context: Our client is an on-demand food delivery platform that evolved into Latin America’s first SuperApp. During the pandemic, its order volume grew by 300%. This growth required the company to scale its platform, control infrastructure costs, and maintain reliable operations as it expanded into new business areas
• Approach: Partnering with the client’s CTO and technology leadership, the team split the app’s core engine into smaller independent microservices, introduced agile practices across 50+ squads, and prioritised fixing technical issues that directly hurt sales and the user experience.
• Impact: The team upgraded the app's infrastructure to handle massive traffic surges, cut delivery cost per order, reduced failed orders by more than half, and noticeably improved customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the SuperApp experienced a 300% increase in order volumes in a very short period. This rapid expansion placed new demands on the company's existing platform and operating model.

At the time, the app ran on a single, all-in-one system (a monolith). As the business grew into new services, internal teams saw an opportunity to break this system into smaller, self-contained pieces so each service could scale independently without risking overall performance.

The core challenge was to scale the business safely without letting infrastructure costs, operational complexity, or service instability grow at the same rate as user traffic. Building on the Super App’s strong operational knowledge and domain expertise, the joint initiative focused on three goals:

• Decouple services for a Scalable Architecture: Redesign system components so high-traffic features can scale independently without taking down other parts of the app or slowing new updates.
• Optimise cost and reliability: Support rapidly growing transaction volumes while lowering the cost per order and protecting the customer experience.
• Enhance operational visibility: Set up a clear system for tracking tech issues so the team can fix the problems with the greatest business impact.

Parser partnered directly with the client’s CTO and engineering leadership to support the scale-up. Integrating seamlessly into the company's existing structure, Parser teams worked alongside internal domain experts in cross-functional squads to drive technical decisions from planning through delivery.

The joint team focused on three key areas:

• Moving from one large app to smaller connected parts: The team broke down the app's monolithic software structure into independent, modular services. This shift let high-traffic features scale independently while providing clear visibility into where server costs could be reduced as order volumes surged.
• Fixing critical issues faster: Working with the client’s operations team, a single process handled more than 1,000 issue reports a week. By linking technical glitches directly to business goals, the team could quickly see which problems hit sales or customers hardest and fix them first.
• Adopting clear, consistent, and agile team practices: To keep work predictable across 50+ teams, the joint group aligned on shared standards and automated 80% of software testing. This helped teams spot issues early, ship updates smoothly, and take full ownership of their work from start to finish.

• 42% lower cost per order: By streamlining server setups and cloud architecture, significantly reducing expenses even as order volume surged.
• 58% fewer lost orders: Upgrading system reliability and real-time tracking drastically reduced order drop-offs caused by app crashes or technical glitches.
• 25% higher productivity: Establishing consistent engineering standards across 50+ squads enabled teams to release updates faster and more predictably, advancing the overall team maturity score to 4.7 out of 6.
• Higher customer satisfaction (NPS): Fewer app crashes and smoother ordering boosted the platform’s customer satisfaction score from 46.3 to over 53, surpassing the industry benchmark of 50 for an "excellent" rating.
• 20% boost in search orders: Upgrading the global search feature made it easier for users to find items, directly driving a 20% increase in completed purchases. As part of this update, the team reduced the app size by 7% and added smarter delivery time estimates.