Russian freight service Deliver closes seed round of $8M, with European plans

Russia-based online freight service Deliver (formerly iCanDeliver) has closed a seed round of $8 million. The startup automates the process of ordering freight transport and makes things more efficient by finding the closest sender.

Inventure Partners (which has invested in Gett, Busfor, Amwell, Chronext and Netology) invested $3 million, joining A&NN Group and Singapore-based Amereus Group as backers.

Deliver’s competitors include Palletter (in Estonia), which matches shipments to nearby trucks in real time, and Convargo (in France), which has raised a $1.69 million round and which also connects shippers with truckers. And then there’s on-demand road freight startup Ontruck which has pulled in a $10M Series A led by Atomico and Idinvest recently.

Deliver is doubling down on its largest base in Russia, where it has more than 59,000 confirmed drivers registered, so far. Deliver now hopes to secure up to 15 percent of the Russian freight market, with plans to begin European expansion and promote more international transportation. European haulage networks were worth $96 billion in 2015.

Up to 23 percent of trucks have “empty kilometers” because of the ineffective transport planning involved, which is why these startups have sprung up. Deliver can calculate shipping prices in seconds, handles several thousand orders a month and claims an average monthly growth of 30 percent. It finished beta testing in January of this year and entered into the active sales and regional development phase.

Founder Danil Rudakov says: “The efficiency of the logistics market today is extremely low in Russia and in Europe. Deliver guarantees shippers full safety of dispatch, transparent pricing, and high quality transportation.”