Pandion, the first parcel network designed for the unique challenges of e-commerce, emerged from stealth today and announced the close of a $4.9 million seed round led by Playground Global and Schematic Ventures, with participation from AME Cloud Ventures and Innovation Endeavors, reports Business Wire.
E-commerce demands
Pandion will use the proceeds from this round to grow the team and expand ongoing customer pilots.
Pandion’s founder and CEO, Scott Ruffin, has over 20 years of experience in logistics as the founder and former head of Amazon Air, and the former vice president and head of Walmart’s e-commerce transportation division. Pandion’s technology was purpose-built for the demands of modern e-commerce. It is the long-term scalable solution for capacity problems during peak periods.
As e-commerce continues to dramatically grow as a percentage of overall retail, Pandion’s logistics platform helps all businesses provide consistent and competitive one and two-day shipping, and makes on-time delivery possible for more retailers, regardless of size and scale. Pandion’s vision is to delight customers and e-commerce shoppers with faster and more cost-effective delivery.
Massive increase in parcel volume
E-commerce currently relies on outdated parcel providers that lack the ability to scale their capacity up or down as needed. The annual holiday shipping crunch illustrates how easily strained these legacy providers are when parcel volume increases. This last holiday season, logistics providers’ capacity fell severely short of customer demand. ShipMatrix estimated the shortfall at approximately 7 million packages a day. Many described the 2020 peak season as “Shipageddon.”
With traditional carriers pushing away customer shipments, limited capacity is constraining e-commerce retailer growth. Even prior to the holiday season, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that online retail sales in the second quarter of 2020 increased by 44.5 percent over the same period in 2019, and McKinsey published research suggesting that US e-commerce penetration made gains equivalent to 10 years’ growth in three months in 2020.
As online shopping’s boom strains the infrastructure we use to deliver goods, Pandion is creating next-generation delivery management software, using machine learning to avoid shipping delays and optimize delivery networks. Delayed deliveries can affect a retailer’s ability to generate repeat business and can damage customer relationships. Small parcel networks, designed for business to business shipments in the 1980s, don’t have sufficient capacity to meet this increased consumer demand, resulting in delayed packages and poor customer experience. Without alternatives, retailers are forced to moderate customer expectations and accept the inevitabilities of missed deliveries and inconsistent experience.
Experts of Pandion
Today, the Pandion team includes some of the country’s leading delivery and supply chain experts. The leadership consists of software development, operations and business development executives from the best in breed companies of Amazon, Walmart, FedEx, Macy’s, HP, Accenture, and Deloitte.
“Retailers can’t sell what they can’t ship,” said founder and CEO Scott Ruffin. “Capacity is highly constrained and the traditional parcel providers are built for a pre-internet brick and mortar world. We are building the modern small parcel provider – tuned specifically to provide low cost, high performance delivery that e-commerce needs. Big e-commerce retailers like Amazon have built their own capability to put their customers first. Now with Pandion, we will do the same for the rest of the industry.”
“The shift to online retail is accelerating at a blistering pace, but the current logistics framework is brittle and unable to support even the current volume,” said Bruce Leak, partner at Playground Global and board member at Pandion. “As one of the top minds in logistics, Scott is uniquely skilled and motivated to help retail businesses deliver their products to customers more reliably and affordably.”
“Parcel networks that were originally designed for mail are collapsing under the weight of today’s e-commerce volume. Pandion is the first parcel company built for e-commerce: a faster, more intelligent supply chain network that scales with the explosive growth of online retail,” said Julian Counihan, General Partner at Schematic Ventures. “With Pandion, retailers can delight customers with fast delivery every single day of the year. Scott Ruffin has experience running supply chains at the biggest companies in the world and is one of the few people who can undertake the monumental task of building a parcel company from scratch.”
About Pandion
Founded in 2020 by Amazon and Walmart veteran Scott Ruffin, Pandion is using machine learning to more efficiently transport e-commerce packages, saving retailers and consumers time and money. Visit pandionpro.com for more information.
About Playground Global
Playground Global invests in founders harnessing frontier technologies to build transformational businesses with multi-generational impact. Recognizing the promise in early stage entrepreneurs developing new solutions in artificial intelligence, automation, life sciences, next-gen compute, cybersecurity, aerospace, and beyond, Playground offers world-class expertise across a wide variety of business and technical domains to help companies achieve their potential. Learn more at playground.global.
About Schematic Ventures
Schematic Ventures is an early stage venture capital fund focused on technology that makes & moves the world. The fund is based in San Francisco and was founded by investors with backgrounds in supply chain, automation and e-commerce technology. Established in 2017, Schematic has portfolio companies touching every aspect of supply chain: freight (Leaf, Platform Science, Flock Freight, Torch), delivery (Pandion, Airspace, FloorFound), warehouse (Outrider, Plus One, CognitOps, SVT), manufacturing (Fulcrum, Symbio) and international shipping (Altana, Mercado, RPA Labs).
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Source: Business Wire
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