In this difficult environment, the Liefergrün start-up has now successfully completed its first major round of financing. Investors led by eCapital are putting €12 million into the company, which offers more sustainable deliveries for e-commerce shipments. The packages are delivered in metropolitan areas with cargo bikes and electric cars.
Liefergrün wants to have little to do with the express service providers. “We don’t want to get parts from A to B as cheaply and as quickly as possible,” says founder Niklas Tauch. Liefergrün sees itself as a kind of more sustainable and more punctual premium competitor to the big providers like DPD and Hermes.
Sustainability is also a big issue in online retail. In some studies, stationary shops to which many customers drive by car do not perform better or even worse. But the weak points in the ecological balance are clear: long-distance transport, mostly with combustion engines, and a lot of packaging material.
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Online trading has become indispensable, says Tauch. Liefergrün wants to give customers a better feeling when shopping because they are the only start-up to offer a completely emission-free service. The company is in the process of setting up its own fleet, but is currently working primarily with logistics partners.
Most online customers are interested in sustainability
The topic is fundamentally important to customers. In the current online monitor of the retail association HDE, for example, 70 percent stated that they had already dealt with sustainability “rather strongly” or “strongly”. According to a study by the digital delivery platform Seven Senders, 70 percent of customers now say they want to pay more for sustainable delivery options.
Kai Hudetz, Managing Director of the Cologne Institute for Trade Research, also considers a more sustainable form of delivery to be a crucial feature. However, sustainability only influences the mass market when sustainable products and services are offered at comparatively low cost.
According to an IFH study, only around 20 percent of consumers belong to the sustainability-conscious, less price-sensitive group. To make matters worse, in the current difficult economic situation, many consumers pay more attention to the price. “Sustainability criteria often recede into the background as a decision criterion,” says Hudetz.
The large delivery services are also trying their hand at sustainability – but they are proceeding rather slowly.
(Photo: imago images/Michael Gstettenbauer)
There are two options for sustainable delivery service providers: Either they look for a small but fine target group in the niche for a premium service with suitable online shops. Or they quickly increase the range by hardly pricing sustainability or not at all. However, here you are in competition with established service providers who are offering better and better service and are increasingly propagating sustainability.
The Liefergrün start-up, founded in 2020 by Niklas Tauch, Max Schleper and Robin Wingenbach, was able to win brands such as Adidas and Dyson as well as a large fashion retailer as customers at an early stage. According to Tauch, the company in Berlin is already making more deliveries than, for example, message in a bottle or gorillas.
Liefergrün is already generating sales in the millions
With sales in the single-digit millions in 2022, the company is already on a scaling course in the second year after it was founded. “In the medium term, we want to become a unicorn with a valuation in the billions and sales in the hundreds of millions,” says Tauch.
Since green delivery has a high volume from the start due to large customers and short distances in the big cities, it is only about ten to 20 percent more expensive than the classic providers. It is worth it to many retailers who have made sustainability their goal. However, Liefergrün has so far only delivered to selected major cities such as Berlin and Hamburg.
A specially developed software guides the delivery green drivers to the optimal route. “So we have extremely efficient tours,” says Tauch, “the number of stops is more than five times as high as with express delivery services.”
However, the industry is highly competitive and others have also discovered the topic of sustainability for themselves. Delivery services such as UPS also rely on cargo bikes in cities, providers such as DHL are building fleets of electric transporters. However, there are no other guarantees for a completely emission-free last mile, says Tauch. In addition, Liefergrün delivers faster – if not within hours.
In addition to the traditionalists, there are also more digital “neo-carriers” abroad. For a while, Hermes tried its subsidiary Liefery, which also offered express deliveries for customers such as Hellofresh and Apple. But the service was discontinued at the end of 2020. “I think Hermes underestimated what it means to build a technology company,” says Tauch.
The two Liefergrün founders received 12 million euros in a first round of financing.
(Photo: Liefergrün)
However, express delivery services are currently still burning a lot of money – and it is unclear how this will change. “I too was very skeptical for a long time,” says tech investor Paul-Josef Patt against this background.
Investors are impressed
But the founders then convinced eCapital of the sustainability of their business model. “It’s not so much a delivery service, but rather the optimization of the last mile – and that with verifiable sustainability standards.” Liefergrün reduces CO2 emissions by up to 86 percent compared to classic logistics service providers, adds Ann-Kristin Kortenbrede, investment manager at eCapital .
The sustainability approach fits into the impact investment strategy of eCapital’s new fund V, which focuses on sustainability. He had previously invested in the Hamburg start-up 1komma5 Grad, the fast charging station specialist Numbat and the start-up Dryad, which is developing a solar-powered sensor network to detect forest fires at an early stage.
With his expertise, Flaschenpost founder Stephen Weich, who is a new investment partner of eCapital, will also be able to help and support the further expansion of the green delivery business. Other investors in Liefergrün’s current financing round are the existing investors Speedinvest from Vienna, Norrsken from Stockholm and a German family office.
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