Bernat Farrero and Jordi Romero interview Eric Fernandez and Victor García, co-founders of Kubbo, one of the startups in which Itnig has invested through the Itnig Fund. The co-founders came to our “Pitch to Investors” session and presented their business project. We really liked the concept. They were at a very early stage and we decided to invest in the project.
What is Kubbo?
We’re a company that allows any ecommerce and digital market in the world to offer the best delivery experience to its customers. We’ve developed our own technology to do it and our long-term vision is that anyone with a smartphone and an available space can make fullfillment of trade orders. Everything that is order management. The picking, the packing and the shipping to the end customer.
Our technology, in addition to allowing this management of these spaces that can be enabled to carry out these processes, allows and gives visibility, and controls our clients. What does this mean? That at the end they can see the entire set of products that are managed by Kubbo, they can see what inventory is associated with each of their products. Also, they see it in real-time.
This is the main problem we are trying to solve. If you are an eCommerce, you generally work with the traditional logistics that does not first give you the technology layer, all the digitization of processes. And second, the problem is that they’re centralized models, which means large distribution warehouses far from the cities.
If the point of demand is in the city and the warehouse is outside the city all the time, and the cost that goes into your package is to bring it from the warehouse to the point of consumption. You can have one or two, three, but it usually depends on an operator. We offer a digitized model and a great delivery experience.
We want to imagine Kubbo as a technology layer that integrates two types of partners underneath, these fulfillment partners who are in charge of all the preparation, ordering, and inventory management processes. Kubbo has its own warehouses. We also have our delivery partners, which are local companies that go to pick up these urban warehouses and deliver.
Who are these delivery partners?
It depends on the type of service. We always focus a lot on the same day, because it is the new standard that we believe the commercial will set. But we also work Next Day and Ultra-Fast, which are orders in less than two hours. For each of the services, there is a suitable partner, a traditional carrier.
With the COVID19 situation, there has been more demand for home delivery. Has this benefited Kubbo?
Yes, of course. There’s no resistance from some businesses because they’re noticing that they can’t depend on a physical channel which is retail that has completely collapsed with a pandemic like this. We have begun to see double-digit growth. Because in the end, the consumer message has changed especially during COVID and our clients have been able to adapt and see the value we are providing at the level of business volume.
How has the volume of transactions and the number of customers evolved in terms of numbers?
On January 31st we took out your first experience and today we are taking 2500 a month. January 31 first delivery, today at 2,500 per month. With which the growth in the scale that I have taken at the operation level has been brutal in a very short time and growing. And we are realizing what we always transfer when we talk with our clients, that logistics for the e-commerce channel is not a cost, it is an investment.
What is the key to customer satisfaction?
We say that 75 percent of the NPS is directly related to the delivery process, there are several studies and from what we live and measure with our largest customers, 60 percent of consumers experience frustration during the delivery process. And that must be eradicated.
A particular case of success during the pandemic is the case of Syra Coffee, a startup in which Itnig has also invested. Yassir, CEO, and founder had to close all of the stores, but it was a great opportunity because he decided to launch the online store and the growth has been amazing, it has become larger than any of the physical stores. Kubbo has been the partner to achieve this growth via delivery.
We’ve had to adapt our capabilities to the volume Syra has achieved. We have been able to do it and now the service works practically on its own. Yassir is one of the entrepreneurs who has understood the value of experience. He sells experience through coffee, he has to sell experience also through the delivery of his coffee. In addition, the model makes perfect sense to Syra’s client profile, not to mention gaining new clients through the internet.
Why did you start Kubbo?
Reading an article in the Wall Street Journal, we saw that Amazon was working on this model for cities in the United States. Victor has an industrial design background and has always been involved in logistics, before Kubbo he was working at Amazon. Eric, on the other hand, is a telematics engineer and worked in several multinationals with many projects and technologies.
We met through LinkedIn. Finding each other was like winning the lottery because you need to find a co-founder that has the same ambition to do something great. We both had positions of responsibility in our companies. And we gave each other a few months to start working together while we paralleled our respective positions and our companies to see if the end was really good. Then, we decided to leave our jobs and dedicate ourselves completely to make Kubbo a reality.
How was the first round? How much did you raise?
Well, it was a very hard process, really, because we started with the round with the intention of closing in October or November, and in the end, we closed in March. It took a little longer, and we went from having a power-point to having a platform that works, so it’s easier for investors to be interested in the project. We closed a round of 266 thousand euros. First of a round of Family Friends and our own funds. And then with the participation of Itnig and other professional investors.
What’s the plan now?
This year what we are focusing on having a team structure, because we are going to be present in six cities nationwide: Madrid, Valencia, Bilbao, Seville and Zaragoza. There is a first phase of national expansion, which is what we are working on now, always under the partner model, and we are already beginning to plan the next phase, which is to internationalize the company.
Learn more about the startups that are part of the Itnig portfolio. If you are an entrepreneur and you are looking for financing, apply through our website, and receive feedback on your project.
For more interviews about startups, business, and technology, visit our channel or subscribe to the newsletter.
This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)