Ryde has raised £2.5m in its bid to become the world’s first fully integrated delivery management system.
The company, formerly known as Ryders, is a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform and it plans on using this funding to continue its journey in creating a more efficient logistics solution, with a special focus on last mile delivery.
A statement from the group details that the app will improve the experience of workers by “optimising their work offering so that (they) can blend scheduled and hourly shift jobs with on-demand work.”
This fundraising seed round was led by Forward Partners and Triple Point and saw investment from the likes of Michael Pennington (Gumtree), Will Neale (Fonix), Matt Robinson (Go Cardless) and Ines Ures (former Deliveroo CMO).
Ryde’s founders Tom Nimmo and Duncan Mitchel bring a wealth of experience to the table and this was no doubt a factor in this investment. Nimmo is known for growing cleaning marketplace Hassle, and Mitchel, is renowned for his part in developing hospitality staffing company TempTribe.
Mr Mitchel discussed how the pandemic changed their overall approach to business.
He said: “When Covid hit, we had to think on our feet, 100% of our customer base went into lock-down overnight, and we were under pressure to find a way forward. When we explored last-mile delivery, we discovered a few interesting things. Firstly, the workforce was hugely disenfranchised. Secondly, businesses big and small could not meet consumer demand effectively, and lastly, there was no fit for purpose solution that allowed companies to truly take control of delivery management. We thought these were great problems to tackle.”
Mr Mitchell went on to say that he hopes to provide this solution across the entire country in the near future . He added: “We want to unlock last-mile delivery for every business in the UK as we strongly believe hyper-localisation is the future. That means arming small retailers to compete with the Amazons through to driving efficiency in global e-commerce businesses.”
CTO, Mr Nimmo, mentioned how their platform puts the worker at the heart of the process.
He said: “We feel that at the moment, being an on-demand delivery worker sucks! Your job is essentially to sit on the street and hope for the best. Sometimes you get to work other times, you don’t. As we’ve built our rider app, we’ve focused a lot on improving this experience for them.”
Ryde already counts Ocado, Gorillas, Dija and Slerp on its client list.
