Consumers want their packages faster, but not every business has the kind of supply chain technology as Amazon or Walmart.
This is, until now. Shipium was founded in 2019 by a group of former Amazon Prime and Zulily supply chain builders. In particular, Jason Murray, co-founder and CEO, was with Amazon for nearly 20 years, and during his last decade, was automating and using machine learning around solving for the “Prime problem” as he called it — how to make fast shipping affordable.
“It requires a huge tech stack to coordinate all of this around forecasting, movement of inventory in the network and what was promised to the consumer,” Murray told TechCrunch. “All of those pieces need to be coordinated well to get the outcomes for fast and efficient shipping in order to build a business like Prime.”
Shipium is building that tech stack so that e-commerce retailers can have that supply chain coordination layer that enables them to have fast and cheaper shipping, too. This comes as the global e-commerce logistics market is poised to be valued at over $3 trillion by 2028.
Data modeling is the company’s “secret sauce.” It coordinates previously fragmented and static decisions, gathers information on what is the cheapest and fastest shipping method, automates it with machine learning and logic and is then able to recommend what will provide the best outcome for a particular customer. The company, on average, says it can reduce shipping costs by over 5% and speed up estimated delivery by several days.
The company raised $8 million in seed funding last year, and following that, Murray said demand picked up.
“We have come in with technology for retailers that have assets, but are not leveraging them because they are lacking in technology,” he added. “There have also been external factors, like COVID, and most retailers were in reactive mode to get through it, but rolling into 2022, e-commerce is sticking to this next level and everyone is adjusting.”
In just the past nine months, the company processed nearly 10 million shipments and is on track to process over 50 million shipments by the end of the year. Shipium delivers in all 50 states and covers over 91% of five-digital ZIP codes.
Today, the company announced $27.5 million in Series A funding led by Insight Partners, which Shipium is touting as “the largest venture-backed Series A for a supply chain software startup.” This gives the company a total of $38.7 million in funding since 2019.
Murray intends to ramp up engineering “to deal with the fact that we are building a nuanced product.” He will also be adding to its sales and marketing teams.
With an industry still pretty fragmented in terms of operations, what Shipium is building involves navigating the local presence and connecting everyone together, including the “bazillion new carriers out there.”
“This is not an easy software to build, so we will always be biased toward product and engineering because of that complexity,” he said. “We are also leaning in on the pickup of e-commerce as a result of COVID, and it is just imperative we go after it as soon as possible. Ultimately, we want our platform to be a bridge of legacy tech and a version that is simple and usable by the retailers.”
via https://www.aiupnow.com
Christine Hall, Khareem Sudlow
