Nigeria’s Fez Delivery, a logistics and delivery company, has raised a US$1 million seed funding round to accelerate its development and grow its team.
Founded in 2020 by Seun Alley, Fez Delivery began life offering janitorial services to businesses, but suffered from absenteeism of the janitors because they were running errands for employees.
“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.”
The startup’s US$1 million seed round was led by Ventures Platform, with participation from Voltron Capital, Acasia Ventures (formerly Cairo Angels), and other angel investors. This funding announcement follows Fez Delivery’s acceptance as one of the only two logistics companies in Nigeria to have received investment from Techstars Toronto.
The three-year-old startup makes money by charging individuals per delivery, and businesses a monthly subscription. In 2022, the logistics startup completed 200,000 trips and grew revenue by 20 per cent month-on-month. Its clientele includes the likes of Flutterwave, Kuda, Moniepoint, OPay, Famasi Africa, and Red Bull.
Alley says the company will continue its push towards leveraging technology to solve real problems.
“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.
Ventures Platform Fund general partner Dotun Olowoporoku said he was excited to partner with Fez Delivery in its mission to bring efficiency to the logistics industry.
“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.
Fez Delivery will continue to deepen its work in Nigeria before considering other African markets.
“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.
