Shippit books Uber to make same hour delivery possible for retailers nationally

Sydney-based scaleup Shippit has partnered with US rideshare and deliveries giant Uber to make same hour delivery a reality for retailers nationwide, kicking things off today with fashion player CUE.

The two companies will work together to allow merchants using Shippit’s e-commerce and logistics software to access Uber’s more than 50,000 delivery partners across Australia to get clothes and accessories into customers’ hands within an hour.

Speaking to Business News Australia, Shippit co-founder and co-CEO Rob Hango-Zada said the partnership will supercharge the retail experience for customers who have been clamouring for a same hour service.

In the last 12 months orders booked on Shippit using same-day delivery increased by 234 per cent compared to the year prior and Uber’s data corroborates the popularity of the next hour use case with delivery accounting for 51 per cent of Uber’s global Q4 bookings.

“If we looked at all of the delivery volume on our platform, whilst it represents a very small portion of bookings, we’ve seen that same day delivery is the fastest growing delivery service - over the last 12 months it’s grown around three-fold,” said Shippit co-founder Hango-Zada, who along with William On won last year's Sydney Young Entrepreneur Award - Digital Disruptor.

“There’s great appetite in the market for the consumer to get what they want, when they want it, and not have that just restricted to food delivery.

“Our retailers can now offer same hour delivery on a nationwide basis, not just limited to certain metro locations.”

The partnership works whereby customers can select an option for same hour delivery at the checkout on the retailer’s website.

From there, Shippit matches the order with an Uber delivery partner. Considering the platform is available nationwide, Shippit gets instant scale without having to build up an army of couriers.

“There are other providers that offer on-demand delivery, but no one can rival the network of Uber’s transportation fleet,” said Hango-Zada, who came in at number 23 with On in Business News Australia’s Top 100 Young Entrepreneurs list in 2021.

Though the service will launch initially with fashion outlet CUE, Shippit hopes more retailers that use the delivery management platform will embrace same hour delivery with Uber. While he was unable to confirm any specific retailers that are considering taking up the opportunity, the co-founder cited the likes of Big W, Jo Mercer and Harvey Norman as Shippit clients.

“It really is up to which retailers want to take advantage of this as quickly as possible, but our growing stable of retailers means Aussie consumers are going to have great choice coming up,” Hango-Zada said.

While customers will benefit from same hour delivery, and retailers will receive extra goodwill from the convenient service, the co-founder noted how a move to utilising fleets like Uber’s could ease some pressure on the national supply chain, which has only suffered more following flooding on the east coast.

“For retailers, it's really about meeting the rising needs of their customer, and it’s also about achieving a more sustainable outcome for the industry as well,” he said.

“As we look to make delivery more local, that should alleviate a lot of congestion on our roads and our national network.”

Uber Eats ANZ regional general manager retail Lucas Groeneveld said the partnership marked a big lead forward for Australian retailers and their customers, and a sign of the future too.

Trend forecasting in the recently released Future of Delivery Report 2022, written by WSP and commissioned by Uber, points to a rapid acceleration of delivery in the next five years with Asia Pacific the largest regional parcels market by value, accounting for around 42 per cent of a global market worth more than $650 billion in 2020.

“We’re delighted to be integrating Uber’s Direct for enterprise offering within Shippit’s software to help accelerate a new industry standard,” Groeneveld said.

“People who can get milk and groceries in an hour want to get fashion and homewares in the same timeframe too and thanks to this partnership they will be able to instantly access that convenience.”

For Shippit, the major partnership follows its $30 million Series B which allowed it to make a splash in the Southeast Asian market, signing three deals with logistics companies in the region last year.

Looking forward, Hango-Zada said the company is looking to bring some more household names onto the platform in the coming months, grow its solutions for the mid-market segments in Australia, continue to scale internationally and further develop relationships with delivery partners around the country.

“Shippit’s whole philosophy is about being carrier agnostic - we believe that carriers do what they do best, and it’s our job to deliver the technology that allows retailers to take advantage of the best of the best,” he said.

“We’re working a lot on our machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms around how we better allocate carriers for particular jobs to try and reduce the overall waste within the delivery process for both the carrier and the retailer.”