Empowering Last-Mile Logistics: Swotzy Gains €500K Pre-Seed Boost for Delivery Innovation
Swotzy, an innovative last-mile logistics startup from Latvia, excitedly reveals a €500K pre-seed funding round, hot on the heels of its initial investment of €90K just four months prior.
Swotzy, a SaaS shipping software, empowers eCommerce businesses to optimise their shipping strategies, choosing the best-fit carriers for deliveries without navigating complex contracts, integrations, and relationships. The software allows companies to save on shipping costs and benefit from valuable insights about delivery performance and the best carrier setups.
Swotzy began in Latvia when Lauris, Swotzy’s co-founder and CEO, started to spot inefficiencies in the last-mile delivery market while working at Printful (still the only Latvian Unicorn). By researching the industry more, he realised that last-mile delivery challenges affected both large and small businesses equally.
Lauris spotted a gap and envisioned a solution that could assist businesses globally. Believing firmly that companies should compete on product and not shipping, the idea for Swotzy was born in August 2022.
The rapid growth of the global last-mile delivery market is making it more difficult for businesses to navigate it. According to Insight Ace Analytics report, last-mile market size was valued at $151.87B in 2022. And with projections indicating a surge to $357.45B by 2031, there’s a pressing demand for innovative solutions. Equipped with cutting-edge tools and insights, Swotzy aims to guide businesses through the dynamic growth of the last-mile delivery market and better serve their customers’ evolving needs.
The pre-seed round funding was led by Black Pearls VC and joined by the previous investor, the Lithuanian-based FIRSTPICK. The funds will accelerate Swotzy’s product development, strengthen the company’s foothold in the Baltic market, and initiate work on data analysis tools. Swotzy aims to improve its product offering, enabling its customers to optimise shipping strategies and improve last-mile delivery services.
This pre-seed investment really confirms that it’s not just us seeing the big problem we’re trying to solve—VCs see it too. They understand that by staying focused on providing valuable solutions to our customers, we can ramp up our operations.
says Lauris Rutkis, co-founder and CEO of Swotzy.
Moreover, they see how these additional resources can fuel this progression even fasterGetting another cash injection so soon really bolsters our confidence to keep going full steam ahead, but now with some extra firepower.
Speaking on the extraordinary fundraising feat at such an early stage Rutkis continues:
When you look at the current lay of the land in the investment world, to attract such investment before we’ve even really started making serious revenue is a great achievement and responsibility at the same time. It just goes to show how much belief there is in what we’re set out to build.
Swotzy is delighted to announce that this round of investment also means that Jarosław Pilarczyk from Black Pearls VC and Andra Bagdonaitė from FIRSTPICK will join the company’s Supervisory Board, infusing new insights and experience into Swotzy’s leadership team.
We are excited to expand our Latvian based portfolio with the addition of Swotzy. This superb team originating from a local unicorn, Printful, and Nordigen, our ex-portfolio company acquired by GoCardless, is a testament to the growing maturity of the ecosystem.
comments Aleksander Dobrzyniecki, the Partner of Black Pearls VC
As alumni of these well-known companies, Lauris, Kristians & Jekabs, along with the team, are embarking on a new ambitious project that is heavily rooted in the pains of shipping & last-mile delivery they experienced first-hand in their respective careers.
We are proud to lead this round and support them to build another category-defining company from the Baltics.
We made our initial investment in Swotzy in March, and since then we have been impressed with the team’s speed of execution and commitment to building a global company.
FIRSTPICK’s Andra also weighs in
Having started Swotzy as a hobby project in early 2023, the management team has left their full-time jobs, built the initial version of the product, onboarded the first 30 paying clients, and are about to onboard all major couriers in the 3 Baltic states.
The additional funding will accelerate this growth even further, and we are glad to join the round alongside Black Pearls.