UK-based parcel delivery startup ParcelBright has raised $1 million in a late seed funding round to power its service which is attempting to shake up the parcel delivery market for small to medium sized e-commerce businesses. Investors included Forward Partners, Talis Capital, Avonmore Developments and Howzat Partners.
ParcelBright bills itself as a one-stop parcel delivery solution for businesses. They negotiate large discounted rates with the biggest courier companies and allow businesses to latch onto those rates via their product range. ParcelBright.com is a plug and play solution for businesses not requiring integration and wanting to send parcels with discounted rates immediately. For more bespoke solutions, Its ParcelBright API allows integration to all the couriers.
E-commerce businesses can often benefit from using different couriers for different products and locations. However, this currently requires several complex software integrations. At the same time many couriers use old technology or are specialised in a specific vertical, making using their services difficult. So ParcelBright takes ownership of their delivery operations so that they can stop wasting time learning different courier platforms and focus on their business.
Its competitors are MetaPack and Parcel2Go (easy post in the US), which, ParcelBright claims, are more complex to use. ParcelBright enables businesses to have both fully managed sub-accounts (with no credit risk and super-fast bespoke integration) and in-depth delivery analytics.
Founded in January 2014, ParcelBright has delivered over 500,000 packages this year. It also provides a Restful API service for larger players.
Founder and CEO, Daniel Lipinski (previously with Groupon), says “We’ve worked hard to bring industry-specific VCs on board, who have already had success within logistics industry and share our vision of where the market is going.”