To advance its development and expand its staff, Nigeria’s Fez Delivery, a logistics and delivery company, has raised $1 million in seed funding.
Seun Alley founded Fez Delivery in 2020. Initially, the company provided janitorial services to businesses, but the janitors were frequently absent because they were running errands for staff members.
“We launched a janitorial service company in 2016. The following year, we observed a trend of janitors being absent from their duty posts because they were on errands for employees,” said Alley.
“As a stop-gap, we introduced delivery services to the companies we were working with so that our janitors could focus on their work. It was wildly successful. This experience made us realise that last-mile logistics is a significant problem for SMEs and individuals. We decided to address this problem by creating a platform that allows businesses and individuals to easily track their items online in real-time, without using multiple logistics partners.”
Ventures Platform, Voltron Capital, Acasia Ventures (previously Cairo Angels), and other angel investors joined Ventures Platform in leading the startup’s US $1 million seed round. This funding announcement comes after Techstars Toronto selected Fez Delivery as one of only two logistics businesses in Nigeria to receive funding.
The three-year-old startup receives revenue from subscription fees paid by businesses and per-delivery fees from customers. The logistics start-up made 200,000 trips in 2022, and monthly revenue increased by 20%. Examples of its customers include Red Bull, Flutterwave, Kuda, Moniepoint, OPay, and Famasi Africa.
According to Alley, the organization will keep working to use technology to address pressing issues.
“With this funding, we are repositioning as a full-fledged tech company focused on last-mile deliveries. While the platform is currently in development, interested parties can sign up to join the waitlist,” she said.
Dotun Olowoporoku, general partner of Ventures Platform Fund, expressed his excitement at working with Fez Delivery to advance the logistics sector’s efficiency.
“This industry is characterised by high fragmentation, demand-supply mismatch, and lack of transparency, due to heavy manual processes. Seun, a second-time founder, is an excellent operator with a solid vision for the future of last-mile delivery. By developing technology to enable other market players to thrive, Fez Delivery is well-aligned with our investment thesis to support market-creating innovation in underserved industries,” he said.
Before looking at other African markets, Fez Delivery will continue to focus on developing its work in Nigeria.
“We’re currently focused on the US $10 billion transport and logistics market in Nigeria, where we still have room to grow. We plan to keep growing in Nigeria and expand to other markets starting in the last quarter of this year. Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa are on our list, but we haven’t decided on the order yet,” said Alley.
