London-headquartered Relay is a tech-enabled delivery network empowering businesses to grow and elevate their e-commerce operations. Now, it has netted a $10 million seed financing round led by European early-stage VC Project A Ventures known for investing in Knowunity and Quantum Systems and Prologis Ventures, Prologis’ corporate venture capital group.
UK expansion plans
With the investment, Relay intends to launch the first UK delivery network, purpose-built for e-commerce. The end-to-end parcel delivery service includes the first, middle and last miles – from e-commerce retailers’ warehouses to consumers’ doorsteps.
Relay’s service is live in London and plans to expand across the UK over the next 12 months. The company is already working with a number of the UK’s top 10 enterprise e-commerce retailers, with more due to go live in January 2024.
E-commerce deliveries made more sustainable
Relay was founded in 2022 by Jonathan Jenssen and Nicole Mazza in London. Relay’s technology-first delivery model is built for efficiency, scalability, and convenience, re-wiring the critical delivery infrastructure to address the growth of e-commerce.
Relay’s service is built on a network of asset-free hyper-local partners, made up of urban pitstops and couriers. With this model, the company is able to significantly reduce traditional logistics overheads, including suburban area depots and sorting centres that incumbents rely on, making parcel deliveries quicker, more efficient and more sustainable.
Already, Relay has partnered with e-commerce leaders, such as JD Group, and THG and brands like Cult Beauty, MyProtein, Lookfantastic and Glossybox, and other enterprise retailers. By the end of the year, the business will be annualising millions of deliveries per year.
“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,” added Jonathan Jenssen, co-founder and CEO of Relay. “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,” he continues.
Philipp Werner, Partner at Project A, said: “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.”
