A large portion of Asia developed its delivery infrastructure around e-commerce, essentially “uberizing” the way deliveries operated down to the last mile, as it adopted the concept of parcel delivery a little later than Europe. Consider DoorDash, but for packages rather than meals. Investors recently awarded Europe’s Relay a huge Series A investment because its founders saw this and chose to bring it to the region.
The majority of parcel delivery services in the West assign drivers to set daily routes, sending them from distant depots close to locations like airports to suburban areas. For packages, this results in significant overhead, wastes miles, and raises carbon emissions, particularly if the packages are returned. Rather, mini-depots, like a neighborhood market, are used under Asia’s “asset-free” approach.
This strategy is used by Relay’s end-to-end package delivery service, which functions more like a food delivery app. Deliveries and returns are combined into a single journey, couriers are matched with routes and carbon-reducing e-bikes are used in place of big vehicles.
Relay was founded by COO Nicole Mazza and CEO Jonathan Jenssen, both of whom had previously worked for Stuart, a last-mile delivery company. The company is now unmistakably approaching its AI-driven scale-up phase.
The majority of delivery personnel capture a still image of the handover. According to Relay’s calculations, this is improved by machine vision, increasing proof-of-delivery compliance by 82%.
As Jenssen shared his opinion with TechCrunch over a call:
“When we hand over a parcel to a customer, we’re able to detect, has it been left in the garbage bin? Has it been left on the porch? This is just one small example of how we improve our quality of service, reduce claims for retailers, but don’t increase our cost. And then that feedback is given directly to the couriers so they know what they’re doing in their training. They’re getting better.”
That last-mile model also greatly lowers energy consumption added Jenssen.
“With just one of our customers we can save a billion miles a year. So imagine this across multiple cities. We’re making a huge environmental impact. And there’s fewer touch points, so there’s less chance of it getting lost,”.
Today, Vinted, TikTok, Temu, and UK retailers like THG Fulfil use the platform. The majority of UK cities, including Manchester and London, now have it as well.
In the meantime, more packages are being delivered. E-commerce is expected to be the primary driver of the worldwide shipping sector, which is expected to grow from 161 billion packages in 2023 to over 224 billion packages by 2030.
Relay has now raised a $35 million Series A round to expand, sponsored by London-based venture capital firm Plural, which was partially founded by the founders of the financial behemoth Wise. Prologis Ventures, the venture capital division of the world’s leading logistics real estate company, and Germany’s Project A also participated in the round.
In a statement: Taavet Hinrikus, partner at Plural, stated why he’s so enthusiastic about the company:
“Jonathan and Nicole are the perfect pair to do this, having lived and breathed the last-mile delivery revolution for almost a decade. Their asset-light model, optimized by AI, is already leading to delivery times that are a fraction of incumbents.”
