Call it the Amazon effect. Since Amazon launched its two-day prime delivery service in 2005, retailers everywhere have clamored to get their stuff delivered faster in order to compete.
Now, The Home Depot has put money into Atlanta-based startup Roadie to make sure its customers can get their orders faster. Roadie’s $37 million Series C round, announced this morning, also included participation from Warren Stephens and Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures.
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The company’s online platform matches drivers with items that need hauling. Its “on-the-way” model aims to tap into unused capacity in vehicles already on the road.
In a press release issued this morning, Roadie described the round as “oversubscribed.” Since its inception in 2015, Roadie has raised a total of $62 million with UPS Capital having also invested in the company.
Roadie plans to use the fresh capital to “continue to innovate” its routing and pricing models and to expand its use of machine learning to predict capacity and match deliveries to drivers “based on real-time supply and demand.” A company spokesperson also told Crunchbase News that Roadie currently has 61 employees, and is “looking to expand” its engineering, data science, sales and operations teams.
The company recently announced delivery partnerships with Delta Air Lines, The Home Depot and Walmart. Per itself, Roadie now operates in 224 metro areas in the U.S. Roadie has 120,000 drivers and claims to have delivered to more than 11,000 cities and towns, “a larger footprint than Amazon Prime Now.”
“Many of these metro areas were initially launched with consumers and small businesses, but have now scaled to meet the needs of enterprises delivering anything up to 100 miles around every major city in America,” Roadie said in a press release.
Mark Holifield, executive vice president of The Home Depot supply chain, said the investment is tied to customer feedback that same-day or next-day deliveries to their homes or workplace are very important.
“We’re investing to bring this level of service to 90 percent of the U.S. population, and Roadie is a key partner for us in making this a reality,” he said in a written statement.
The funding marks The Home Depot’s third startup investment since January 2018. It invested in HOVER, which makes 3D home models, last year. And it also participated in Homee’s Series A last June.
Illustration: Li-Anne Dias
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