Opply, a London-based automated B2B supply chain platform, announced that it has secured $4M in a Seed funding round from Chalfen Ventures and Anthemis Group. Other investors, including Entrepreneur First alongside prominent angel investors like founders and teams from GoCardless, Trouva, Farewill, and Jamjar, also participated.
The UK-based tech company will use the funds to build engineering and commercial teams, enhance its technology and expand the global team.
What does Opply solve?
Globally, SME consumer goods brands spend an estimated $1.4T annually on the cost of goods, but the market suffers from a lack of transparency and relationships in the supply chain.
Helen Murphy, the CEO, co-founded Opply after seeing how challenging it was for brands to find the right suppliers.
In fact, she spent more than 10 years growing some of the biggest consumer goods brands at P&G, Bain, and her own consumer company.
“Opply saves brands and suppliers vital time, allowing them to focus on running their business. The platform takes what was a highly fragmented market and a frustrating, time-consuming process for both parties and brings it firmly into the modern global retail environment,” Murphy comments.
Automates supply chain process
Helen Murphy and Martin Postel founded Opply as part of the Entrepreneur First incubator programme in London. The platform automates the complicated supply chain process for both consumer brands and suppliers, helping them save time and money through machine learning and a unique global supplier database.
“Starting with food and beverage brands, we have built the world’s biggest and highest-quality supplier database alongside an automated sourcing and ordering process. The platform automates purchasing end-to-end, with personalised quotes from quality global suppliers, a unique dynamic payments system that is perfect for SMEs, and worldwide trackable shipping,” says Murphy.
Opply claims that it is the world’s first personalised end-to-end supply platform that covers everything from sourcing to simplified workflows to payment systems. The company uses AI technology to match brands with the right suppliers instantly.
By automating the supply chain between the two, the platform saves customers an average of two months – the time it would take to source ingredients, along with a saving of 20% on costs.
Opply currently works with brands such as Bold Bean Co and Acid League and it has the power to help the 25M consumer goods brands worldwide with $4T of revenue who do not have the access, knowledge, or power to create effective supply chains.
Mike Chalfen, Founder at Chalfen Ventures, comments, “I like to invest in companies that capture new data, make intelligent automation easily actionable, and so create large new markets. Helen, Martin, and the team have the drive, vision, domain insight, and data chops to do this for the gigantic food and beverage market. With Opply, brands can source transactable supplier data while managing procurement from sourcing and order management to transaction and financing. This will bring unprecedented liquidity to a trillion-dollar global market.”
Sophie Winwood, Principal at Anthemis, adds, “While investment pours into consumer brands, no one is focused on the larger and uglier problem of procurement and there has never been a more relevant time to tackle this issue. The Opply team has the perfect combination of experience, passion, and skill to help new brands compete on cost and quality. We are thrilled to support the company as it scales to meet proven demand for a more seamless sourcing and supply chain management platform.”