Shutl, a UK-based on-line postal company, has secured a $2m round led by US-based postal service UPS’s Strategic Enterprise Fund and with the backing of France-based postal group Geopost.
The corporate venturing unit of UPS, which took a 6 per cent stake in the company, will provide a launch pad for Shutl’s US expansion.
Shutl’s existing investors, Hummingbird Ventures and GeoPost, also invested.
Shutl will use this latest investment to expand its team, acquire new retail partners in preparation of a launch of its service in the US in early 2013.
This latest funding follows a series of rounds, The company’s first round was £500,000 investment from a group of investors led by angel Simon Murdoch and venture firm Big Bang Ventures in Belgium.. This was followed by £400,000 in 2010 and £650,000 in 2011, data provider CrunchBase added, with an unnamed European postal group participating in the latter round.
Shutl works as a platform that connects retailers to local same-day courier companies, aggregating capacity across these carriers into a web-service which links to retailers’ internal systems. This year Shutl’s annual sales are expected to reach seven figures.
Tom Allason, founder and chief executive of Shutl, who previously founded and exited from Ecourier.co.uk. said “We are ready for the US, a market that we estimate will be worth around 26 billion by 2016. We have spent this year taking Shutl national across the UK, now we are ready for the US”.