The Russian crowdsourced courier service Dostavista has secured $2 million — one year after a previous round of funding — from its existing investors, the Russian VC funds Buran Venture Capital and AddVenture, and FJ Labs, a New York based investment firm founded by Fabrice Grinda and Jose Marin.
The news was reported yesterday by business daily Kommersant, which cites exchanges with the startup and the investors.
The new funding will allow Dostavista to pursue its international expansion. The company already operates in India, Indonesia, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam, in addition to Russia, its native market.
The startup made attempts to operate on the Chinese and the UK markets, but “the results there were not satisfactory,” said Dostavista’s founder Mikhail Alexandrovsky in an exchange with Kommersant.
The company’s turnover reached 65 million rubles (roughly $1 million) in 2016, and grew by 2.5 times last year, according to Alexandrovsky.
Targeting small and mid-sized online and offline retailers such as pastry or flower shops, Dostavista promises to deliver a package within hours of purchase.
The couriers of Dostavista, which says it takes inspiration from Uber, are required to install the app and create an account. After verification and certification, the couriers can start delivering parcels around the city, working either full-time or based on orders assigned automatically by a smart robot. The company takes a 20% commission fee on each order.
Dostavista claims that its proprietary algorithms can “evaluate several dozens of parameters in real-time and pick the best courier for the job.”
Dostavista has shown “a fantastic growth by every measure for ridiculously low investment amounts,” said AddVenture’s managing partner Max Medvedev last year.
