In a world where everyone shops from home for food and goods, delivery businesses have to run like clockwork to serve customers efficiently while turning a profit. The British start-up Naurt, which is today announcing a £300,000 fund-raise, promises to help them do exactly that.
Forbes first spoke to Naurt in October 2021, shortly after the start-up had put the finishing touches to its technology, which drives highly accurate geo-location tracking software. In the two years since then, the company has worked with more than 80 customers to identify the right market for its services, and to prove its software is easily integrated into customers’ existing technology stacks.
“It’s all about proving your credibility, particularly when you’re trying to sell to large enterprise customers,” says Jack Maddalena, CEO of Naurt. “We’ve shown that what we offer really does work.”
Those early-stage customers have come from multiple sectors – collaborations have included a pilot with luxury car marque Ferrari – but Naurt believes the delivery sector is its perfect target market. Its software enables businesses to track delivery vehicles more accurately, correcting the geo-location errors that are inherent in phones and other devices linked to the global navigation satellite system. That’s useful for delivery businesses in both the food and goods space, but the more important element of Naurt’s sales pitch is the functionality it has built off the back of that tracking.
“Each time a delivery company has to pick up or drop off, we feed the data on how long it takes the driver to get from their vehicle to the point of exchange,” Maddalena explains. “The next time that the company has to go to the same address, our system tells them where to park and which entrance to use based on the quickest route identified by historic data.”
For drivers making a delivery to a block of flats, say, or picking up a food order from a restaurant in the middle of a shopping centre, that instruction can save significant amounts of time. That enables the same driver to make more deliveries each day; it also ensures delivery companies can provide their customers with more precise information about when they’ll arrive.
A patent on this “intelligent parking solution”, as Maddalena describes it, is now pending. In testing with early adopters, the software has enabled customers to increase the number of deliveries they make each day by almost 7% – potentially offering huge productivity savings.
Naurt’s technology has been impressive from the start, but the challenge has been to commercialise its ideas. “We’ve taken the time we needed to prove that business case,” says Maddalena of the past two years. “And importantly, delivery companies don’t have to replace their existing tools – Naurt just plugs into their technology stack.” The company’s testing with clients suggests integrations can be completed very quickly, he adds, easing the sales case.
The company is certainly getting noticed. Last year, it won Tech Nation’s Rising Stars competition for start-up businesses, pipping more than 600 other early-stage ventures to the prize. It’s also picked up trial periods with delivery companies on both sides of the Atlantic, in the US and in Europe.
“We’ve also used our beta period to get ahead of the demand we expect to see, by expanding the team,” adds Maddalena. Headcount has doubled over the past two years, with high-profile hires including Lucy Woolfenden and Cien Shen, who were, respectively, senior executives at Yolt and Zilch.
The additional capital now coming into the business provides headroom for Maddalena to make further hires, particularly in the sales team. The funding is coming from Founder and Lightning, a “venture builder” that specialises in working with emerging technology companies. “We are confident that Naurt has a globally unrivalled location-tracking solution,” says Conor Moylan, chief investment officer at the investor. “Last-mile delivery problems are costing businesses millions each year and Naurt will help slash these inefficiencies.”
If so, the company has the potential to grow very rapidly in a last mile delivery sector worth close to $1 trillion globally. “We want to dominate the delivery space,” adds Maddalena, though the short-term targets for the company are more modest. Not least, the company has yet to reach annual revenues of more than $1 million. “Getting to that point will be a lynch pin for bringing in additional investment,” Maddalena explains.
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