\n<\/p>\n
Being somewhat later than Europe in adopting the idea of parcel delivery, much of Asia built its delivery infrastructure around e-commerce, effectively \u201cUberizing\u201d how deliveries worked down to the last mile. Think DoorDash but for parcels, not food. This is what the founders of Europe\u2019s Relay realized and decided to bring to the region \u2014 and why investors just gave it a massive Series A round.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most Western parcel delivery companies have fixed daily routes for drivers, dispatching them from far-flung depots near places like airports to suburban destinations. This creates enormous overhead, wastes mileage, and increases carbon emissions for parcels, especially if they are returned. Instead, Asia\u2019s \u201casset-free\u201d model uses mini-depots, like a local store.<\/p>\n
Relay\u2019s end-to-end parcel delivery service adopts this approach, operating more like a food delivery app. It matches couriers to routes, combines deliveries and returns into a single trip, and replaces large trucks with carbon-reducing e-bikes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Founded by\u00a0CEO Jonathan Jenssen and COO Nicole Mazza, who both previously worked at last-mile delivery company Stuart, Relay is now clearly entering its AI-driven scale-up phase.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most delivery people take a static photo of the handover. Relay enhances this with computer vision, boosting proof-of-delivery compliance by 82%, per its estimates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As Jenssen told TechCrunch over a call: \u201cWhen we hand over a parcel to a customer, we\u2019re 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\u2019t increase our cost. And then that feedback is given directly to the couriers so they know what they\u2019re doing in their training. They\u2019re getting better.\u201d<\/p>\n
That last-mile model also significantly reduces energy consumption. \u201cWith just one of our customers we can save a billion miles a year. So imagine this across multiple cities. We\u2019re making a huge environmental impact. And there\u2019s fewer touch points, so there\u2019s less chance of it getting lost,\u201d added Jenssen.<\/p>\n
The platform is now used by Vinted, TikTok, Temu,\u00a0and U.K. retailers such as\u00a0THG Fulfil<\/a>.\u00a0 It is also now in most U.K. cities, including London and Manchester.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, parcel deliveries are on the rise. The global shipping market is forecast<\/a>\u00a0to surpass 224 billion parcels by 2030, up from 161 billion in 2023, fueled mostly by e-commerce.<\/p>\n To scale further, Relay<\/a> has now raised a $35 million Series A round led by London-based VC, Plural<\/a> \u2014 a fund started, in part, by the founders of fintech giant Wise.\u00a0The round also included participation from Germany\u2019s Project A and Prologis Ventures, the VC arm of global logistics real estate leader Prologis.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a statement: Taavet Hinrikus, partner at Plural, said of why he\u2019s so enthusiastic about the company:\u00a0\u201cJonathan 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n