Interview with Duncan Mitchell CEO and Co-Founder of Ryde
What does your company do and what is your USP?
Ryde equips businesses with the technology, people, and vehicles they need to establish an integrated logistics solution – we focus on same day delivery with the technology to make it cheaper and more efficient than any other delivery option.
The company’s delivery solutions are suitable for every type of business – from the high street retailer to the eCommerce giant. We are a people and planet focused business and put strong emphasis on the treatment of our workforce. We operate a fully green fleet and out goal is to transform last-mile logistics and hyper-local delivery for good.
What retailer need do you fulfil?
Instant (within an hour) and same day delivery. The future is same-day delivery and smart retailers are recognising the need to speed up their delivery times as a way to differentiate themselves. Ryde has a comprehensive platform to enable this. Additionally, Ryde helps make the entire process sustainable with fleet options that include bicycles, electric bikes, electric cargo bikes, and eVans for clients that need more space for larger deliveries or multi-drops.
How do you deliver on this USP?
By paying careful attention to the needs of our customers and adapting on the fly, we have evolved our product to increase productivity of the rider and reduce cost per delivery.
Ryde has made instant delivery possible by creating a unique shift booking technology called Hourly+. The solution helps improve rider productivity by booking riders onto shifts but still allowing them to receive on-demand jobs. This feature offers riders better job security while allowing customers, especially those within the retail and grocery space, to reduce the cost of operations while increasing fulfilment rates for on-demand deliveries.
Additionally, Ryde provides leading technology via an API integration that our customers use to power their operations. It is a white-labelled solution which means the customer retains their brand integrity throughout.
Businesses that work with Ryde have the option to customise and brand a green fleet. The company works with its customers to build out fantastic fleets of vehicles from cargo bikes to e-bikes all fully client branded.
How would you describe your vision?
To be a leading force in the evolution of hyper-local, instant delivery. And to ensure that we make a positive contribution to both local communities and the planet. To be the UK’s most innovative delivery service business.
Which retailers do you work with?
We work with a wide range of customers and not just retailers, anyone from Feedr to CoLogic. Businesses across multiple verticals that are looking for instant delivery turn to us.
How would you describe your growth, what have been the main points in your expansion and what has been key to your success?
We have had exciting growth particularly in the grocery and restaurant space where we work alongside most of the major players. The key to our success has been to build best-in-class technology and focus on giving amazing service to both our customers and the workforce. We’re proud to now be enabling the first movers embracing same-day delivery in retail and e-commerce.
What challenges are you addressing for multichannel retailers who aim to meet peak season demands?
We want to enable small retailers to compete with Amazon and help large e-commerce businesses to unlock greater efficiency in their delivery operations. Ryde offers something to companies of all sizes.
How are you using the emerging technology to support the retail growth?
Ryde is a powerful, flexible, and fully-integrated delivery management platform. For small businesses, the product can be accessed through a range of plugs-ins and third party integrations. For enterprise customers, our open API integration means that they can imbed and brand Ryde coherently within their organisations.
Ryde is built on the basis of high-quality technology. We support businesses in establishing a custom fleet of vehicles and a curated team of riders and drivers, all to supercharge their delivery management, with the help of technology.
What do you see as challenges for the retailers and suppliers over the coming years? How are you prepared to meet those challenges?
I think the main challenge is the cost of last-mile currently. It has been very difficult for businesses that do not have the scale and density of Amazon to reach profitability. Customers have developed extremely high expectations of fast and very cheap services and we are seeing this to be unsustainable for companies. Deliveroo lost £300m last year. Venture capitalists are re-thinking how they deploy cash. It will be interesting to watch the emergence of things like robotics in delivery becoming more commonplace. Retailers will need to figure out ‘rapid, same day service.’ Ryde is innovating its delivery solution to build the leading same-day, dynamic delivery technology. Helping businesses reduce costs and deliver more.
What targets are you aiming to achieve in the next five years?
We aim to build a business that first and foremost is renowned for being good to people and the planet. We know that hyper-local delivery is the future and we hope to be a meaningful part of unlocking it in a net-positive way. We are building novel solutions to improve the efficiency of the last mile and reduce the cost per delivery.
Give us your one sentence elevator pitch.
We help retailers of any size seamlessly outsource their delivery workforce and deliver same day service. For everything from live route mapping to proof of delivery, count on Ryde to power your business.
Ryde in brief:
Founders: Duncan Mitchell & Tom Nimmo
Founding Date: Jan 2020
HQ Location: Epworth House, 25 City Rd, London EC1Y 1AA
No of Employees: 30 (office) 15,000+ (courier workforce)
Customers: Gorillas, Ocado, Go Puff, Slerp, FlipDish
Website: https://www.ryde.team
This Company Spotlight was produced by eDelivery and sponsored by Ryde. Funding articles in this way allows us to explore topics and present relevant services and information that we believe our readers will find of interest.
