Packfleet boosts London’s e-commerce market with multi-million investment

14 Mar 2024 --- Packfleet, a UK-based tech-enabled “carbon-neutral” parcel courier, has raised US$10 million in series A funding. The funds will bolster Packfleet’s presence in the London delivery market, where the company achieved five times growth throughout 2023. 

The financing will support the expansion of the start-ups’ increasing merchants roster and the development of Pathfinder, the proprietary routing software that has been instrumental in the company’s success. 

The round was co-led by General Catalyst, an early Packfleet investor and Voyager Ventures, a leading early-stage climate fund. All of Packfleet’s existing investors participated in the funding round, including Creandum, Entree Capital and Founder Collective. 

Upgrading London’s delivery services
Around 500 million parcels are delivered in London each year, and after experiencing poor service when parcels arrived broken or went missing, the Packfleet founders developed technology to make sending and receiving a parcel as easy as ordering a takeaway for ten million Londoners. 

Since its launch in 2021, the B Corp-certified courier has grown to more than 35 HQ employees, and now Packfleet’s team of over 100 drivers will deliver for hundreds of businesses, including leading consumer brands Who Gives A Crap, Pizza Pilgrims and HURR.

Packfleet maintains a parcel failure rate of 0.07% — ten times less than the leading traditional courier, it claims. 

Tristan Thomas, CEO and founder of Packfleet, says: “Our merchants are increasingly seeing how their customers care about a business’s environmental credentials, and investors are no different.”

“When we founded Packfleet, we set out to create a tech-enabled courier service that made deliveries better for everyone — not just customers, but merchants and drivers too. We’ve proven that our model works, and with the backing of General Catalyst and Voyager, we look forward to continuing to change the logistics sector for good.” 

Juliet Bailin, partner at General Catalyst, adds: “Packfleet’s team has proven it can execute at speed and we believe they have made excellent progress on product, operations, revenue growth and margin improvement.”

Accelerating logistics’ decarbonization
Bailin says General Catalyst is excited to support the team on its next growth stage, with the UK’s e-commerce market being one of the largest in Europe. 

“[Packfleet’s] human approach and in-house technology are combining to revolutionize the industry and set a new standard for couriers — one that’s intuitive and efficient for everyone involved,” she adds. 

Sarah Sclarsic, founding partner of Voyage, asserts that decarbonization makes “good business sense” in every sector of the economy. “We believe Packfleet will be foundational in accelerating the decarbonization of last mile logistics globally, starting in the UK.”

“Packfleet’s market-leading consumer experience and carbon-neutral operations are creating the future of parcel delivery. Their adjacent software products will make it easier than ever for companies and consumers all over the world to reduce their emissions.”

“Throughout this process, we have been impressed with the founding team’s laser focus on attractive unit economics at scale,” says Sclarsic.

Edited by Natalie Schwertheim