Singapore’s Qourier, which describes itself as the “Uber for logistics”, has raised S$890,000 (US$630,000) in seed money.
Participating investors in the same-day delivery startup include Japanese technology company Startia plus private investors including DB Schenker Asia Pacific regional CIO Alex Tan and Impiro’s Eric Dadoun.
Qourier will use the newly raised capital to expand its teams and grow its service, as well as upgrade its platform to include smart notifications/recommendations to increase driver efficiencies. It will also consider moving into a bigger office.
Founded in 2014, Qourier follows the Uber model of working with freelancers and other courier companies to fulfill client requests. It claims to have more than 5000 freelancers in its fleet. Domestic deliveries can be by van, car, bike and even hand-carried on public transport.
Qourier says it is able to distinguish itself from competitors with its pricing model.
“Our wide spectrum of delivery modes gives us flexibility in costs and assignments,” says co-founder Wong Yongjie. “That makes us the most cost-effective service against competitors such as GogoVan and LalaMove, which offer deliveries only via vans and bikes, and CarPal, which uses cars.”
Another point of differentiation is that it offers international deliveries, through DHL, also at a competitive rate.
“For international deliveries, we brokered a heavily discounted contract, at 70 to 80 per cent off, with DHL – with more partners to come soon – by leveraging on the strength of our 500-plus clientele base. We pass on these savings to our customers.”
Qourier’s clients include Aviva, Expedia, Prada and Toys R Us.
For less urgent deliveries, Qourier says it is looking at collaborating with other logistics startups such as NinjaVan.
