Bigblue, a Paris-based order fulfilment platform, announced on Friday that it has secured $15M in a Series A round of funding. The round was led by Runa Capital with LPV as the secondary lead investor. Existing investor Samaipata also participated.
Fund utilisation
The company says it will use the funds to hire 100 new people over the next 12 months in sales, marketing and operations, and triple its engineering staff. After opening its first office in Madrid, Bigblue plans to accelerate its expansion to the rest of Europe over the next 12 months.
Bigblue aims to expand its low-carbon 1-day delivery to all of Western Europe and extend its Fast-Tag Program, which helps brands reduce their marketing costs.
The programme automatically pushes eligible buyers a 98 per cent accurate 1-day delivery time. As per the company’s claims, early adopters have seen a significant increase of 20-40 per cent in conversion, saving them substantial amounts in acquisition costs.
“Powering independent brands in France since 2018, Bigblue does not simply offer a fulfilment solution that matches Amazon standards – we aim to make it easy for brands to grow online,” says Tim Dumain, co-founder at Bigblue. “With this new round we will support scaling service offerings for Bigblue’s growing base of online merchants, fuel hiring efforts, and continue to position the company as the leader in the D2C fulfilment space.”
Bigblue: What you need to know
Founded by Mathias Griffe, Tim Dumain and William Meunier, Bigblue is an order fulfilment platform that enables e-commerce merchants to offer a seamless delivery experience to their customers.
According to Bigblue, e-commerce giants like Amazon and Zalando have invested billions in software and infrastructure to provide a quality experience for their customers, however these solutions are optimised only for their own businesses,
Bigblue provides merchants with various services shipping automation, transport optimisation, branded post-purchase communications, and more. All the services are included in a single cost so sellers know exactly what they will pay on day one, says the company.
Bigblue operates an AI-powered European warehouse and carrier network to pick the best shipping method for each shipment, and ensure fast and green fulfilment.
Further, the company has native integrations with Shopify and other e-commerce platforms, allowing sellers to create an account in minutes, send inventory into the Bigblue network, and start selling with fast, branded fulfilment in as little as one week.
Currently, Bigblue has more than 300 client brands and aims to ship 4M parcels from 3 different countries in 2022.
Bigblue says parcels are delivered via cargo bikes and electric vehicles in major cities, all packaging is plastic-free and recyclable, and the company’s warehouses are Ecocert certified.
Investor
Runa Capital, a global VC, is currently investing from its Fund III, which focuses on early-stage investments in deep tech, including quantum technologies and cloud infrastructure as well as SaaS, including vertical solutions for the healthcare, finance, and education industries.
To date, the VC firm has invested in more than 80 companies across Europe and North America.
“Runa Capital sees Bigblue as a crucial part of the online merchants’ tech stack and believes that the e-commerce market will continue to grow at an impressive pace in the future. We’re confident the team has everything to become the European leader in e-commerce fulfilment,” says Dmitry Chikhachev, General Partner at Runa Capital. “We appreciate the potential of the platform, and are happy to support the team on its way to success”.
