[Funding alert] London-based Relay Secures €9.2 Million seed funding

Relay, Prologis' corporate venture capital group, has partnered with e-commerce leaders like JD Group, THG, which includes brands like Cult Beauty, MyProtein, Lookfantastic, and Glossybox, and other enterprise retailers in its first year of operation. Relay is backed by Project A, a leading early-stage tech VC in Europe, and Prologis Ventures.

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Relay is establishing its service in London and aims to spread throughout the United Kingdom in the upcoming year. With more scheduled to launch in January 2024, the company has begun working with some of the top 10 enterprise e-commerce retailers in the UK.

Jonathan Jenssen, co-founder and CEO of Relay said , “In Asia, delivery companies were built specifically for e-commerce – in Europe and the US, it was the exact opposite, with delivery companies built for a pre-internet world, Relay is bridging the gap between rapidly evolving e-commerce and old-school delivery. Not only are we enabling better delivery in terms of speed and cost for retailers and end-customers, but we are also doubling down on making sure our ecosystem of delivery drivers and the planet benefit.”

Deliveries done with Relay are more dependable, affordable, quicker, and can cut carbon emissions by up to 50% for retailers. The company's routing algorithm can combine deliveries and returns in a single route and links couriers to routes in real time.

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Philipp Werner, Partner at Project A, added: “The parcel delivery landscape remains rooted in the pre-digital era. It’s time for a delivery solution built for the e-commerce age. We believe this can only be achieved by addressing the entire value chain, rather than just innovating the ‘last mile’. Relay’s lean operational model, coupled with the team’s exceptional industry knowledge and technology-centric approach, promises to radically disrupt the status quo in parcel delivery.”

About Relay

Relay is a 2022 startup whose disruptive service relies on a network of hyper-local partners that are asset-free and consist of couriers and urban pit stops. With the help of this strategy, Relay is able to significantly cut down on the typical logistics overheads that incumbents still rely on, involving sorting centres and suburban area depots, to make parcel deliveries more rapid, effective, and sustainable.

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