Luckabox, the Winterthur-based VentureKick and KickStart alum recently secured a seven-figure pre-Series A round which will serve to reshape its product aimed at managing the end-to-end last mile logistics process for retailers.
The latest round has seen existing investors Alpana Ventures, SICTIC and DAA Capital rejoin and new investors like Bettina Hein, a serial technology entrepreneur who stated that she invested in Luckabox “because of the extremely strong female founder team”.
The Luckabox investors believe that the pandemic has amplified the need for Luckabox’s solution and they are excited about the company’s strong growth. Also, the Swiss startup recently made it onto the 30th place on this year’s list of Top 100 Swiss Startups.
“The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the company’s growth by 600% as retailers rushed to fulfill orders. Ecommerce’s boom has shown companies how critical it is to streamline their delivery processes and that need is only going to go up.” stated Aike Festini who co-founded Luckabox with a fellow female and currently acts as the company’s CEO.
Retailers that want to optimise last mile delivery to get the best price and quality typically have to work with multiple courier companies. That interaction between retailer and courier is done via a series of emails, calls, spreadsheets and documents resulting in wasted time and energy. In addition, retailers have to deal with their end customer’s ever changing delivery demands such as new time windows, lost packages and little tracking visibility only to coordinate those issues to the courier company. But now, or to be exact “since 2017”, there is Luckabox.
Luckabox’s offering aims to take the load off of retailers and manages the last mile for them. Imagine a process where a customer places an order with a retailer and that order gets delivered without the retailer having to lift a finger. That’s what Luckabox does, they manage last mile delivery for the retailer, so the retailer’s responsibility ends post transaction.
The fresh capital of the latest fundraise will help fuel a next gen product that provides retailers an overview of their deliveries through Luckabox intuitive dashboard allowing them to track the most minute details of the last mile delivery process.
Retailers will always have the option to step in at any time to tweak a delivery or change the carrier Luckabox’ algorithm has chosen. But overtime, the hope is that retailers will be “hands off” and trust that their orders are being delivered seamlessly by Luckabox giving retailers more time to sell more products.
That “hands off” value prop is backed by retailer confidence made possible by Luckabox’s vast carrier network and services; one of which is its contribution to sustainability which helped secure a 70K CHF grant from Klimafonds Stadtwerk Winterthur’s allotted to innovative CO2 reduction initiatives in the region.
Luckabox already boasts an impressive network of 50+ professional carriers ranging from local bike couriers to mid and larger-sized express operators and taxi providers with coverage throughout all of Switzerland. Their delivery services include same day, next day and scheduled deliveries as far out as a month.
