UniUni closes B2 Round, raises US$20 million
Richmond, B.C.—One of the fastest growing companies in Canada will be using its latest funding round to hypercharge its astounding growth in the U.S. marketplace.
UniUni, a Canadian powerhouse in last-mile logistics headquartered in Richmond, B.C., raised US$20 million during its recently completed B2 Round of financing, behind lead investor Celtic House Asia Partners.
“In the past few years, UniUni has achieved a hundredfold growth, and has accomplished the goal of complete coverage in Canada and extending its services into the United States, demonstrating its rapid expansion capabilities,” said Celtic House Asia Partners managing partner Jie Chen. “The penetration rate of e-commerce in North America has always been dragged down by expensive and slow logistics, and we believe that there will definitely be logistics companies specifically serving e-commerce that will disrupt the traditional logistics industry.”
Chen believes UniUni is the most likely company to become the industry disruptor.
“These are the two important reasons why we are again investing in UniUni and have invested in four rounds consecutively,” Jie Chen said.
Founded in 2019, UniUni delivers tens of millions of parcels annually from Coast to Coast in Canada, and now boasts more than 50 distribution centres in North America, including in Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami and Chicago. Just one year into the U.S. expansion, UniUni now reaches 20 per cent of the American population.
Celtic House Venture Partners will also be investing in UniUni again.
“UniUni has proven itself in Canada, and we’re extremely confident it can do the same in the United States, which is why we’re investing in them again,” said David Adderley, partner at Celtic House Venture Partners. “UniUni is disrupting the B2C last-mile delivery model with an asset-light delivery and logistics platform optimized for ecommerce and a variable-cost model for driver recruitment, dispatch and routing.”
Adderley believes UniUni can rapidly attain daily volume in the millions thanks to the automation and digitization of its parcel deliveries.
The North American logistics market is ripe for innovation, Adderley said, because the biggest logistics firms were born before the digital era, and their aging infrastructure and bloated organizational structure are challenged to keep up with the demands of the ecommerce era.
UniUni CEO Peter Lu said UniUni’s rapid ascent and swift expansion make it strategically well-positioned to seize upon the urgent need for a new generation of ecommerce companies.
The United States currently sees daily parcel volume in excess of 80 million, and a market size of more than US$180 billion.
Lu said the funds will be used to increase capacity, efficiency and accuracy by automating sortation centres at strategic locations across the United States.
UniUni ranked fourth in the Globe and Mail’s 2023 list of top growing Canadian companies, with a three-year growth rate of more than 12,000 per cent.
Joining Celtic House Asia Partners in this funding round are: Vision Plus Capital, Fosun RZ Capital, Celtic House Venture Partners and Lanchi Ventures.
UniUni has previously raised US$40 million in financing, bringing the total raised to date to US$60 million.