Startup News: Pandion raises $4.9 Million to develop more reliable, lower cost e-commerce shipping

Pandion, a parcel network designed for the unique challenges of e-commerce, emerged from stealth and announced the close of a $4.9 million seed round led by Playground Global and Schematic Ventures, with participation from AME Cloud Ventures and Innovation Endeavors. Pandion will use the proceeds from this round to grow the team and expand ongoing customer pilots.

Pandion’s founder and CEO, Scott Ruffin, has over 20 years of experience in logistics as the founder and former head of Amazon Air, and the former vice president and head of Walmart’s e-commerce transportation division. Pandion’s technology was purpose-built for the demands of modern e-commerce. It is the long-term scalable solution for capacity problems during peak periods.

As e-commerce continues to grow as a percentage of overall retail, small parcel networks, designed for business-to-business shipments in the 1980s, don’t have sufficient capacity to meet this increased consumer demand. The result is delayed packages and poor customer experience. This last holiday season, for instance, ShipMatrix estimated the shortfall at approximately 7 million packages a day, as legacy delivery providers networks were strained. Without alternatives, retailers are forced to moderate customer expectations and accept the inevitabilities of missed deliveries and inconsistent experience.

“Retailers can’t sell what they can’t ship” said founder and CEO Scott Ruffin. “Capacity is highly- constrained and the traditional parcel providers are built for a pre-internet brick and mortar world. We are building the modern small parcel provider – tuned specifically to provide low cost, high performance delivery that e-commerce needs. Big e-commerce retailers like Amazon have built their own capability to put their customers first. Now with Pandion, we will do the same for the rest of the industry.”

Pandion’s logistics platform helps all businesses provide consistent and competitive one and two-day shipping, and makes on-time delivery possible for more retailers, regardless of size and scale. The startup’s next-generation delivery management software uses machine learning to avoid shipping delays and optimize delivery networks. The company’s team includes some of the country’s leading delivery and supply chain experts. The leadership consists of software development, operations and business development executives from the best in breed companies of Amazon, Walmart, FedEx, Macy’s, HP, Accenture and Deloitte.

“The shift to online retail is accelerating at a blistering pace, but the current logistics framework is brittle and unable to support even the current volume,” said Bruce Leak, partner at Playground Global and board member at Pandion. “As one of the top minds in logistics, Scott is uniquely skilled and motivated to help retail businesses deliver their products to customers more reliably and affordably.”

“Parcel networks that were originally designed for mail are collapsing under the weight of today’s e-commerce volume. Pandion is the first parcel company built for e-commerce: a faster, more intelligent supply chain network that scales with the explosive growth of online retail,” said Julian Counihan, General Partner at Schematic Ventures. “With Pandion, retailers can delight customers with fast delivery every single day of the year. Scott Ruffin has experience running supply chains at the biggest companies in the world and is one of the few people who can undertake the monumental task of building a parcel company from scratch.”