Dive Brief:
- Delivery and fulfillment platform Bringg has raised $100 million in Series E funding, bringing its valuation to $1 billion, the company announced on Wednesday.
- The funding round was led by Insight Partners along with seven existing investors. Bringg plans to use the new funds to scale through mergers and acquisitions, as well as expand its partnerships.
- Separately, Bringg and Stor.ai, a firm that provides end-to-end e-commerce solutions for grocers, announced a partnership on Tuesday that would allow retailers to choose between using their own delivery fleets or partnering with a third party.
Dive Insight:
With the latest funding round, Bringg says it’s the first one in the last mile delivery and fulfillment cloud tech sector to achieve unicorn status.
Founded in 2013, Bringg has established a global presence with companies using its last-mile delivery platform in more than 50 countries. The pandemic’s acceleration of e-commerce adoption also boosted Bringg’s growth, which saw 180% year-over-year new customer growth, according to the press release.
As Bringg looks to grow its partnerships, the newly announced collaboration with Stor.ai leverages retailers’ desires to control their branding, while having options for how they want to handle delivery fulfillment. By teaming up, Stor.ai and Bringg give retailers the option to use their own fleets, third-party providers or another form of service, while also providing real-time visibility into online transactions and in-store picking.
For Bringg, the partnership not only positions it as a stronger competitor to Instacart as grocers seek more control over their e-commerce operations and branding but also potentially links the company up with Stor.ai’s clients, which include Unilever, Toshiba and Microsoft.
Previously, Bringg has teamed up with Uber, DoorDash and Toronto-based e-commerce provider Mercatus, and the company has provided Walmart with its technology. Bringg recently worked with e-commerce platform Naveo Commerce and U.K. food convenience retailer Co-op to roll out grocery e-commerce across hundreds of stores in 2020.
