German delivery startup Karla has raised $3.8 million in pre-seed funding, while also launching an app designed to optimize deliveries and provide transparency for eCommerce orders.
As EU Startups reported Thursday (Feb. 24), the funding was led by 468 Capital, La Famiglia, and angel investors including Jochen Engert of FlixMobility, Oliver Merkel of Flink and Florian Gschwandtner of Runtastic.
Founded last year, the Berlin-based firm provides a customer communication platform for merchants to help retailers make shopping more convenient, said Philippe Padrock, the co-founder of Karla.
“Tedious post-purchase experiences, such as a lack of transparency and inaccurate delivery times, significantly and negatively impact the customer experience,” Padrock said.
“Two thirds of all customers are less likely to return to the same online shop following a negative delivery experience. Providing customers with a unique solution to fully control their deliveries — from delivery times to drop-off points and returns — will not only increase customer retention, but also improve user satisfaction and significantly reduce the number of complaints,” Padrock added.
The company points to a recent study from Accenture that show 90% of consumers like to track their deliveries and want deliveries integrated into their lifestyles. Karla says it plans to meet this need by including an overview of tracking and visibility across carriers and online stores.
Meanwhile, the number of packages delivered globally is projected to grow at 15% per year, Karla says, with 200 billion parcels in circulation by 2025.
Karla is also aiming to introduce a product — set to launch later this year — that lets merchants, carriers and shoppers communicate throughout the post-purchase experience. Buyers will get an overview of their delivery and get the ability to make adjustments and deal with things like refund, claims and questions about their orders.
Read more: 39% of eCommerce Shoppers Are Initiating More Disputes
This comes at a time when a growing number of consumers filing transaction disputes, as PYMNTS’ research has found. Our survey found that 39% of eCommerce shoppers said they were disputing more eCommerce transactions now than they did before March 2020.
The most common reason is service errors, things like merchants sending packages to the wrong address or charging an incorrect amount, something that accounted for 71% of the disputes in the last 12 months among the people we surveyed.
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