“We were able to make use of the Swiss government’s support package. We wouldn’t have survived otherwise.”
that ended in a complete logistical dis- aster. She is glad that the investors who wanted nothing to do with the e-scooter adventure kept faith in the original prod- uct: the on-demand delivery platform. When Luckabox finally seemed to be having some success with this platform after the outbreak of the pandemic, the start-up decided to do some more cus- tomer research. “We knew there were pain points, but where exactly? We soon discovered that our customers did indeed want an on-demand platform, but not additional carriers. That insight led us to adjust the proposition. After all, we already had so many carriers connected to our platform that we could offer our customers a one-stop shop for all trans- port options. The penny finally dropped in April 2020. Retailers can use our plat- form to print labels, track shipments, analyse data and troubleshoot, among other things. They can then sit back while we organize the last-mile transport. Moreover, we’re cheaper because we get volume discounts from carriers, plus we can provide a broader portfolio of services than a standard parcel carrier such as DHL or DPD.”
Sustainability on the rise
All relevant European supply chain start- ups have been positioned in the Maturity Matrix for the fourth consecutive year, grouped into ten different categories of solutions. In the blockchain in the sup- ply chain category, which was added last year, the two well-funded Swiss scale-ups Nexxiot and Ambrosus, which between
EUROPEAN START-UP CONTEST
Supply Chain Media will be organizing the Euro- pean Supply Chain Start- up Contest for the fourth time on 18 May 2021. The award ceremony
will form part of the hybrid inNOWvate Supply Chain Event to be held at the Van der Valk Hotel in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and live-streamed online.
For more information, go to:
www.innowvate.eu
ment, sustainability, sea and air freight, warehousing on demand, inventory man- agement, tracking & tracing, blockchain for supply chain, road freight platforms, e-fulfilment and last-mile delivery. In each category, the relevant type of pack- aging unit is indicated: single stock keep- ing units (SKUs), parcels, pallets or com- plete containers of goods. The vertical axis of the matrix shows the maturity of the start-up or scale-up based on its age, number of employees, awards won, num- ber of customers and, in particular, capi- tal raised. To be included in this matrix, the companies must have been founded in or since 2015, because a start-up is at most five years old. Due to the coro- navirus pandemic, the age in years and months has been rounded down.
New horizons
them account for €100 million in venture capital, have been joined by two newcom- ers: CircularTree and AFTS, both from Germany.
The start-ups in the field of online logis- tics tendering seem to have disappeared, and their role appears to have been taken over by the online sea freight and road freight platforms. However, a Dutch start-up called Lox, which uses a smart algorithm to check transport companies’ invoices, was founded in 2020, but it is still too early to create a separate category for this in the matrix. Logistics tendering has been replaced by a new category for sustainable supply chain solutions. New entries in this cat- egory are BigMile and Trustrace, while Sustainabill and Circular IQ have moved across from the supplier management category because of their specific focus on sustainability.
This latest version of the matrix still has ten different categories of solutions, from supplier management upstream in the chain to last-mile delivery on the cus- tomer side. The current ten categories are online solutions for supplier manage-
Last year’s COVID-19 storm has consid- erably thinned out the field of European start-ups. Established companies are now once again seeking out the innova- tive solution providers, who themselves are sailing towards new horizons. Lucka- box is now even thinking about expand- ing abroad again, after being forced to abandon its previous attempt to conquer the German and Austrian markets. “It was too soon back then. In hindsight, it wasn’t smart to broaden our focus to more countries so quickly,” reflects Fes- tini. Luckabox is now planning to move into Germany again, this time together with its customer Metro: “We have a strong base at the moment. The German rollout is now better planned, better pre- pared and better funded.” Luckabox is still standing while other start-ups have fallen by the wayside. Is that down to luck or perseverance? “The latter,” states Festini. “Persistence is what enabled us to survive. We didn’t give up on finding the right product/market com- bination. In that respect, it’s a little ironic that the pandemic has increased the need for our original solution: on-demand delivery. It seems like we launched our concept too early in 2018. We’re now in the right place at the right time, but it has taken a lot of effort for us to get here.” As all competitive sailors know, performance in a storm is what separates the winners from the rest.
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SUPPLY CHAIN MOVEMENT, No.40, Q1 2021
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