In October 2021, when I read on Twitter that JJ Velaz was leaving foodpanda / Delivery Hero, I immediately sent him a DM on Twitter to chat.
Up to that point we had only exchanged a few public tweets but we had never had a more serious or professional conversation. We had not talked much about logistics or his professional career, but I was always interested in the way he thought about things, whether they were related to tech or not. As I’m writing this on June 20th, we have yet to meet in person.
In those private conversations JJ mentioned that at foodpanda and through various roles in the company’s logistics department (from operations manager to director of logistics), they had developed specific technology to make it easy for retail businesses to offer last mile transportation to their customers. He also said that he was considering leaving his stable job to become a founder and follow what he saw as a much bigger opportunity.
It’s no surprise to anyone these days that the main role that foodtech marketplaces play is to connect supply and demand via urban logistics. What we believe is going to happen in the coming years, is that all kinds of retail businesses (not just foodtech) will be interested in offering last mile delivery to their customers.
As a business owner, if you want to do that, you can hire a developer and build an integration with one logistics provider. However, relying on just one (or two) providers is most likely not going to be an efficient business decision. Logistics providers have peaks and valleys in terms of deliveries, price fluctuations, disparity in ETAs during the week and many other variables that affect quality of service.
Based on this, we think there’s an opportunity for someone to build integrations with an n number of providers and then offer those integrations as a service to retail businesses. You connect with one API and you have access to an ecosystem of companies that, through business logic, allow you to make rational and efficient decisions.
That’s exactly what Kosmo is building, starting with the APAC (more specifically Singapore) and express delivery (1h or less).
Kosmo is building technology to simplify delivery for any kind of business. Kosmo allows you to do instant and scheduled delivery by accessing all the last mile providers in your city. They are also building front-end widgets on top of their API for their partners to show multiple delivery options to their final customers, seamlessly integrated in their order flow to improve the delivery experience.
What Stripe did for payments, Kosmo is doing for delivery.
This model has existed for a while in North America and Europe, but we believe there’s no clear leader in regions such as APAC or Latam, which makes the Kosmo opportunity even more appealing.
There are several highly density populated urban areas, a large number of businesses that are becoming more and more digital every day and embracing ecommerce, an ecosystem of small, medium and large urban logistics providers and, more importantly, a large number of consumers that through foodtech and other technologies have changed their expectations on how soon -and how easy- they should receive the products that they buy online.
On top of that, there’s something that we often look for in pre-seed and seed founders, which is market knowledge. When we started chatting more seriously with JJ, it was perfectly clear that he knew a whole lot about logistics, both from the point of view of the providers and the businesses interested in integrating such services.
When that happens, we’re immediately attracted to an opportunity because at pre-seed we give a lot more weight to founder experience than many other variables.
All of the above combined, have led us to lead a $1.5M pre-seed round in Kosmo, along with angel investors from the senior management of companies like Delivery Hero, Deliveroo, Lazada, Belvo and more.
Kosmo is today launching a beta version of its product, which is already being used by a selected group of partners to refine the product and take it to a wider audience in the near future. If you’re business interested in Kosmo, you should reach out to them.
We’re very much interested in logistics technology. Not just from a business perspective, but also from a sustainability point of view, because we truly believe that when applied right, these technologies can help re-shape urban areas for the better, reducing congestion, pollution and making life easier for both businesses and citizens.
Slowly but surely, we have invested in several companies that rely on logistics services (Rice, La Gran Familia Mediterránea) and even on pure providers (IF in the reverse logistics space), and we think there’s a lot more that can be done in the space.
If you’re a company building products and services that make it easy, efficient and sustainable to ship goods around, please reach out!
In October 2021, when I read on Twitter that JJ Velaz was leaving foodpanda / Delivery Hero, I immediately sent him a DM on Twitter to chat.
Up to that point we had only exchanged a few public tweets but we had never had a more serious or professional conversation. We had not talked much about logistics or his professional career, but I was always interested in the way he thought about things, whether they were related to tech or not. As I’m writing this on June 20th, we have yet to meet in person.
In those private conversations JJ mentioned that at foodpanda and through various roles in the company’s logistics department (from operations manager to director of logistics), they had developed specific technology to make it easy for retail businesses to offer last mile transportation to their customers. He also said that he was considering leaving his stable job to become a founder and follow what he saw as a much bigger opportunity.
It’s no surprise to anyone these days that the main role that foodtech marketplaces play is to connect supply and demand via urban logistics. What we believe is going to happen in the coming years, is that all kinds of retail businesses (not just foodtech) will be interested in offering last mile delivery to their customers.
As a business owner, if you want to do that, you can hire a developer and build an integration with one logistics provider. However, relying on just one (or two) providers is most likely not going to be an efficient business decision. Logistics providers have peaks and valleys in terms of deliveries, price fluctuations, disparity in ETAs during the week and many other variables that affect quality of service.
Based on this, we think there’s an opportunity for someone to build integrations with an n number of providers and then offer those integrations as a service to retail businesses. You connect with one API and you have access to an ecosystem of companies that, through business logic, allow you to make rational and efficient decisions.
That’s exactly what Kosmo is building, starting with the APAC (more specifically Singapore) and express delivery (1h or less).
Kosmo is building technology to simplify delivery for any kind of business. Kosmo allows you to do instant and scheduled delivery by accessing all the last mile providers in your city. They are also building front-end widgets on top of their API for their partners to show multiple delivery options to their final customers, seamlessly integrated in their order flow to improve the delivery experience.
What Stripe did for payments, Kosmo is doing for delivery.
This model has existed for a while in North America and Europe, but we believe there’s no clear leader in regions such as APAC or Latam, which makes the Kosmo opportunity even more appealing.
There are several highly density populated urban areas, a large number of businesses that are becoming more and more digital every day and embracing ecommerce, an ecosystem of small, medium and large urban logistics providers and, more importantly, a large number of consumers that through foodtech and other technologies have changed their expectations on how soon -and how easy- they should receive the products that they buy online.
On top of that, there’s something that we often look for in pre-seed and seed founders, which is market knowledge. When we started chatting more seriously with JJ, it was perfectly clear that he knew a whole lot about logistics, both from the point of view of the providers and the businesses interested in integrating such services.
When that happens, we’re immediately attracted to an opportunity because at pre-seed we give a lot more weight to founder experience than many other variables.
All of the above combined, have led us to lead a $1.5M pre-seed round in Kosmo, along with angel investors from the senior management of companies like Delivery Hero, Deliveroo, Lazada, Belvo and more.
Kosmo is today launching a beta version of its product, which is already being used by a selected group of partners to refine the product and take it to a wider audience in the near future. If you’re business interested in Kosmo, you should reach out to them.
We’re very much interested in logistics technology. Not just from a business perspective, but also from a sustainability point of view, because we truly believe that when applied right, these technologies can help re-shape urban areas for the better, reducing congestion, pollution and making life easier for both businesses and citizens.
Slowly but surely, we have invested in several companies that rely on logistics services (Rice, La Gran Familia Mediterránea) and even on pure providers (IF in the reverse logistics space), and we think there’s a lot more that can be done in the space.
If you’re a company building products and services that make it easy, efficient and sustainable to ship goods around, please reach out!
