Innoship is a pure SaaS delivery management specialist founded in Romania in 2019, offering advanced technology solutions that optimize last-mile management through data intelligence for over 200 medium and large retailers in Europe. The company will help drive Alsendo’s transition from a shipping reselling business into a technology-driven, SaaS-focused powerhouse. At the same time, Innoship will benefit from Alsendo’s broad regional coverage and expertise in providing comprehensive shipping services for small and medium businesses.
The advanced machine-learning algorithms of the solution analyze the performance of different delivery options across the relevant geographic area and the retailer’s delivery points and automatically allocate each delivery by carrier based on business KPIs improving dramatically the customer experience and decreasing the cost of shipping.
“At Innoship, our purpose has always been to create the best product for our customers to enable them to better manage disruptions, accelerate growth and add new value to their own consumers in today’s rapidly changing world. Our growth so far has been beyond our expectations and now we aim even higher. We are extremely grateful to the customers who are using our innovative technology and support us with feedback, but also to the investors who have guided us in the right direction. We are very excited about the partnership with Alsendo; together with them, we will create the leading e-commerce shipping solutions technology business in Europe and beyond,” stated Daniel Nicolae, Andrei Paul, Robert Tanase and Dan Ungureanu, Co-founders of Innoship.
Innoship was set up in 2019 by Daniel Nicolae, Andrei Paul, Dan Ungureanu and Robert Tanase and has previously raised funding from GapMinder, a venture capital fund that invests in Romanian and CEE companies at Seed or Series A stage and from leading business lawyer and entrepreneur Catalin Grigorescu. With this transaction Gapminder VC and Catalin Grigorescu exited their investments in Innoship.
The co-founders will continue as shareholders and executives to run and expand the business of Innoship throughout Europe while taking additional responsibilities at the level of the Alsendo group. Catalin Grigorescu will continue to support the company as a member of Innoship’s Supervisory Board.
“Since acquiring Alsendo, we have been proud to support its dynamic growth while planning our ambitious buy-and-build strategy. We will continue to capitalize on the strong growth of the underlying e-commerce sector in Europe, as well as investing in the technology platform and pursuing international expansion, as we seek to grow Alsendo further. We will also focus on further strengthening the merged teams and developing management and leadership talent with experience in SaaS,” stated Edgar Kolesnik, partner at Abris Capital Partners.
Central European investor Abris invested in Alsendo (previously apaczka) in 2020, and has since partnered with the firm’s management team to expand the business organically and through acquisition as it seeks to build the leading technology-driven provider of shipping solutions in Central and Eastern Europe.
In early September 2022, Alsendo acquired the majority stake in Zaslat – a technology-enabled parcel delivery platform focused on consumers and corporate clients in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 2021, Alsendo also bought the majority stake in Sendit, a parcel delivery platform for individual customers in Poland.
Aleksandra Zawadzka, CFO of Alsendo, commented: “We continue to pursue our strategy of transitioning to a technology-driven business model. This transaction will allow us to provide advanced solutions to a broadened universe of clients to support their business activities. It will create a unique platform, offering wide range of tools for e-commerce customers – in particular larger businesses and marketplaces.”
The acquisition of the majority interest in Innoship is another step forward for Alsendo in targeting unique technology businesses with a focus on new SaaS products for medium and large enterprises. The partnership also brings synergies between Alsendo and Innoship, such as through the consolidation of solutions provided to leading marketplaces by both companies offer across European markets.