Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Press releases are provided by companies as is and have not been edited or checked for accuracy. Any queries should be directed to the company issuing the release.

Ryde raises £2.5m to expand vision as the world's first fully-integrated delivery management platfor

Ryde, formerly Ryders, a SaaS platform for last-mile delivery, has raised £2.5m to continue to expand its vision as the world's first fully-integrated delivery management system. Ryde's mission is to unlock hyperlocal last-mile delivery for every bus

Ryde raises £2.5m to expand vision as the world's first fully-integrated delivery management platfor

Ryde (formerly Ryders), the SaaS (Software as a Service) platform for last-mile delivery, has announced today that it has raised £2.5m to continue to expand its vision to become the world's first fully integrated delivery management system.

Tackling one of the largest and most exciting markets across Europe, this round of funding comes off the back of not only a great idea but the need for an efficient workforce logistics solution servicing market disruptors such as Gorillas and Ocado.


According to a recent article published by Sifted, "last-mile delivery startups in North America and Europe raised $3.1bn in funding from VCs in the last quarter alone –– and that growth shows no signs of slowing down."

This seed round was co-led by Forward Partners (who recently announced their IPO) and Triple Point, with participation from current investors Seedcamp and Swiss Founders Fund.

Alongside the institutional investors, the company continues to build an impressive list of angels, including Michael Pennington (Gumtree), Will Neale (Fonix), Matt Robinson (Go Cardless) and Ines Ures (former Deliveroo CMO).

The founders, Tom Nimmo and Duncan Mitchell have considerable sector-specific experience. Tom grew cleaning marketplace Hassle across Europe before the team sold the company to German-based Helpling for €32 million. Duncan, on the other hand, developed TempTribe into a market leader in tech-enabled hospitality staffing.

The raise follows a pivot from their original platform - Gameplan, built to service enterprise clients in the events sector. "When Covid hit, we had to think on our feet," commented CEO Mitchell. "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."

Ryde comes to market with a "rider first" philosophy putting the workforce wellbeing at the heart of all their decision making. This means rethinking everything from how gig workers receive and engage with their jobs to how the internal team supports them.

CTO Nimmo 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."

Improving the experience has included better optimising their work offering so that a worker can blend scheduled and hourly shift jobs with on-demand work. As well as this, the app helps workers to map earnings and routes far more effectively than their competitors.

The company is leading an emerging trend of blending workforces. This essentially involves enabling customers to seamlessly combine internal and external delivery employees and contractors.

It is a solution whereby companies will upload and self-manage their own pool of workers whilst accessing an outsourced pool of thousands across the UK as required.

Mitchell said, "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."

Ryde is growing rapidly and already counts Ocado, Gorillas, Dija and Slerp amongst an impressive client list.

Luke Smith, partner at Forward, comments "Last-mile delivery is increasingly important for retailers and Ryde can enable seamless delivery for any business whilst improving the experience for gig workers. We're very excited to be backing them on their journey to become a key part of the e-commerce infrastructure."

Daniel Cardenas-Clark, an investor at Triple Point, comments: "We have been immensely impressed with what Duncan and Tom have achieved to date and couldn't be more excited to be supporting them on their mission to win the blended service category. The 'rider first' philosophy positions Ryde on the right side of history as far as treating gig workers is concerned and is a much-needed change of direction in the industry."

https://www.ryde.team/?sc=pr

The Latest

More Stories

a headshot of Bill Pedriana at Noblelift
Photo courtesy of Noblelift

NOBLELIFT North America welcomes Bill Pedriana as newpresident

Des Plaines, Illinois – January 7, 2025: NOBLELIFT North America, a global leader in lithium-iron material handling technology, is excited to announce the appointment of Bill Pedriana as its new President. With nearly four decades of experience in the material handling industry, Pedriana is poised to lead NOBLELIFT North America into a new era of innovation, growth, and customer-centric success.

Bill Pedriana served as Chief Marketing Officer at Big Joe Forklifts, where his visionary leadership helped rebuild the brand, develop groundbreaking products (including the Joey series of access vehicles and their cobot pallet truck concept), and execute comprehensive sales and marketing strategies. For 14 years, Pedriana played an instrumental role in achieving an extraordinary 14x growth in sales and helping to drive the global expansion of Big Joe’s parent company, EP Equipment.

Keep ReadingShow less

Featured

Loren Swakow of Noblelift

Loren Swakow announces retirement as managing director of NOBLELIFT North America

Des Plaines, Illinois – Loren Swakow, Managing Director of NOBLELIFT North America, has announced his retirement effective January 31st, 2025, leaving behind a legacy of unprecedented growth, innovation, and strong relationships built over nearly a decade at the helm of the company.

Swakow joined NOBLELIFT in October 2016, tasked with the challenge of bringing an unknown brand into the highly competitive American market. At the time, NOBLELIFT had no dealer network and minimal brand recognition. Over the course of eight years, Swakow's strategic leadership and expertise have led to remarkable success, driving average annual growth of 43%. Today, NOBLELIFT is supported by a professional dealer network spanning the entire country, with sales growth consistently outpacing the industry, a true testament to Swakow’s vision and determination.

Keep ReadingShow less
a family shops in a grocery store using a smart trolley
Photo courtesy of Instacart

Australian supermarket chain rolls out AI-powered grocery carts

Grocery shoppers in Australia will soon be able to zip in and out of the store in record time, bypassing the lines for cashiers or self-checkout kiosks altogether. They can just walk in, make their selections, and walk out with their bags in hand.

The secret to this express shopping experience is the “Caper Cart,” an AI (artificial intelligence)-powered smart trolley from San Francisco-based Instacart. In its first deployment in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, the system is being tested by Coles Supermarkets, a food and beverage retailer with more than 1,800 grocery and liquor stores throughout the country.

Keep ReadingShow less
a women in an office watching a delivery of boxes

How green is your glue?

If you’re looking to make the packaging process more eco-friendly, the obvious place to start is with the box itself. And that’s exactly what Salt Lake City-based Packsize did when it made its initial foray into sustainable packaging back in 2002. That year, the company launched its first product, an innovative on-demand packaging system designed to reduce cardboard waste (and the need for filler material) by creating a right-sized box for each shipment.

Now the company is ready for the next step: greening up the glue.

Keep ReadingShow less

​OPEX® Sure Sort® X with Xtract™ Warehouse Automation System Is Named a Finalist in the New Equipment Digest NED Innovation Awards

MOORESTOWN, NJ (December 18, 2024) OPEX® Corporation, a global leader in Next Generation Automation providing solutions for document, mail, and warehouse automation, has been selected as a finalist in the 2024 NED (New Equipment Digest) Innovation Awards, which celebrates innovations in industrial technology, tools, and equipment that empower businesses to work faster, better, and more cost-effectively.

OPEX Sure Sort® X with Xtract™, a high-speed automated sortation and order retrieval system, was recognized in the NED Innovation Awards Automation category.

Keep ReadingShow less