Bringg, a provider of order orchestration software for last-mile deliveries, has raised $100 million in a series E round, bringing it into the growing unicorn club as it looks to international expansion, explores extensions into less-than-truckload and other forms of transportation and eyes acquisitions.
The $1 billion valuation is about 4x from a year ago, when Bringg raised $30 million in a series D round, which the company confirmed to TechCrunch.
The round was led by Insight Partners with participation from seven existing investors, including Cambridge Capital, GLP, Harlap, Next 47, Pereg Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and Viola Growth.
Bringg CEO Guy Bloch said the funding was intended to support the company’s growing business since 2020, when ecommerce was the name of the game in retail, and it poured resources into engineering and platform development to add to its capabilities. The company says it saw 180% growth in new customer acquisition in 2020, and revenue from existing customers grew by multiples.
“For brands it became a very different ballgame last year,” Bloch said. “It came down to, what channels were you using to perfect the customer experience? Online CX is about convenient, cost effective, fast and reliable delivery. We saw an increase in existing customers who responded quickly to consumer needs.”
Bloch said his vision for Bringg is to give all kinds of shippers endless ways to deliver to their customers, from stores and DCs and FCS to third-party and crowdsourced fleets and 3PLs.
“They need to be able to connect to consumers at any point in time to control of delivery, visibility and decide where, how and when to get a package,” he said. “It requires us to expand our delivery hub, providing access to millions of drivers through BI and data insight capabilities. We’re a data platform, and data is imperative to our customers who also want to keep those insights and take action against them in order to delight their customers in an efficient way and sustain margins.”
One of the knocks on delivery giant Instacart is the lack of visibility into customer data to fuel critical customer insights that drive those relationships and their longevity and value.
Bloch also said Bringg is committed to the net zero carbon emissions movement through its Bringg Green initiative. Announced in April, it provides customers and partners with education, functionality and data to execute, manage and track their last-mile sustainability efforts.
“Many brands have signed the net zero pledge,” he said. “If you do the math, 33% of carbon emissions will be from the last mile in a few years. We literally have the ability to help reduce that to zero by connecting to electric vehicles, or finding various other ways to deliver green options, like delivering from stores to reduce the miles. Machine learning and AI will help us find more efficient ways to do so.”