Onfleet, the company that provides infrastructure for on-demand delivery, recently powered its one millionth delivery. More than half of those deliveries occurred within the last four months, Onfleet CEO Khaled Naim told TechCrunch. Onfleet powers deliveries and logistics for companies like HelloFresh, Meadow, Doughbies, Lugg and others.
To be clear, Onfleet does not provide the drivers — it simply offers the software platform to handle all of the logistics that go into providing delivery services. Most of the deliveries Onfleet facilitates are in food and beverage, like groceries, prepared meals, alcohol and food from restaurants. In April 2015, the company said it had facilitated just 100,000 deliveries for the year.
Here’s a look at Onfleet’s delivery growth since October 2014.
Nationwide, there are about 7,500 courier and parcel delivery companies. Nationwide, FedEx is one of the top courier delivery services, with about 49% of the express shipping market in the U.S., according to investment research and analytics firm Market Realist. Meanwhile, the local courier business is very fragmented space, and many of the services in that space are operating with low-tech tools to operate their businesses and organize deliveries, Naim said. That’s why we’re seeing companies like Postmates, Uber, Amazon, Google, Shyp and others getting into the on-demand, local delivery space.
“A lot of people do compare us to Postmates and Uber, but it’s really about how can companies can leverage a technology product if [they] have [their] own drivers and if [they] want to outsource deliveries during spikes of demand,” Naim said. “We can facilitate that.”
Onfleet has raised $2.3 million from investors like CrunchFund, Semil Shah and Winklevoss Capital. In December, a similar company called Bringg, but with an emphasis on bigger businesses, recently raised $5 million, bringing its total amount of funding up to $7.5 million. While Onfleet does serve some business-to-business needs, it’s bread and butter is business to consumer.
