A VC in Vacationland

   Santa Clara, California  –  Material handling technology company Grabit has garnered an undisclosed amount of Series A institutional venture capital financing.

Grabit has created electroadhesion-based gripping products to improve the holding or grasping of objects in an industrial or manufacturing setting.

Formation 8 led the round, which also included ABB Technology Ventures and Nike.

The company said it would use the financing to continue the commercialization process of its technology.

US truck – California 2007 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Transportation
technology company Drivewyze
has secured $7.5 million in Series A financing led by Emergence
Capital Partners and iNovia Capital.
The company delivers time-saving and cost-effective driving solutions to
commercial vehicle operators in the trucking industry. The funding will be used
for sales and marketing expansion, as well as new product development.

Image via CrunchBase

According to TI Weekly, competition continues to heat up as China's two largest e-commerce companies, Alibaba and Jingdong (formerly known as 360Buy) go head-to-head in the logistics and last-mile delivery space.

Last week, Alibaba officially announced its plan to create a logistics network to connect all of China with a goal to provide same day delivery anywhere in the country. Alibaba plans to accomplish this via partnerships – depending on express providers such as Shentong Express, ZTO Express and YTO Express for last mile delivery. As for regional distribution centres, it is likely Alibaba will take ownership of most of these facilities, allowing its customers to utilise space and value-added services.

Meanwhile, Jingdong has opted to take ownership of its logistics network. The company is building its network across the country and currently has six large logistics centres, over 900 distribution stations and covers over 1,000 districts and counties. In mid-May, Jingdong announced the building of its newest logistics centre in Shenyang. Expected to be completed towards the end of 2013, the facility will be about 174,000 sq m and will be highly automated; similar to Amazon facilities.

Jingdong's logistics subsidiary accounts for more than 85% of all orders placed on Jingdong's websites. Interesting to note, not only does its logistics subsidiary handle deliveries on behalf of Jingdong, but it also has an express license from the Chinese government to provide similar services for other companies.

The fierce competition between China's two largest e-commerce companies has prompted Jingdong to expand its last-mile delivery options. Dubbed as the "speed-up" project, Jingdong now offers 3-hour delivery within Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan and Shenyang. Its courier network utilises vans and bicycles to deliver from city warehouses directly to customers. Payment options include credit card or cash on delivery.

Simultaneously, the company is also offering evening delivery services and later cut-off times to the same cities. According to its press release, Jingdong now offers same-day, next-day and timed delivery to 150 cities across China.

Real-time tracking of deliveries is also provided for Jingdong's customers.  The company outfits its employees with satellite-based tracking devices so customers can track everything, from what time their purchases were packed to where the delivery person is via a map and also how to reach the delivery person by mobile phone.

Competition within the largest e-commerce logistics market will continue and perhaps improve a domestic network that has been lacking in technology, warehousing and distribution facilities and last-mile service options. No matter what option Alibaba or Jingdong may take in managing their logistics networks, the ultimate winner in this environment will be the Chinese consumers and SMEs.

So, I got @dynamodonut delivered via @postmates for National Donut Day. Not sorry. (Photo credit: mariannemasculino)

Postmates, the startup that delivers anything to you within an hour, just launched in New York. 

 This marks Postmates' third city. Before today, it was only available in San Francisco and Seattle.

But for now, Postmates will only be available in a 10-block radius around the Flatiron district in Manhattan. That means Postmates will deliver anything within Manhattan in under an hour to workers and residents in the Flatiron District. 

Once you fire up the app, you'll see the most popular places around you. From there, you can purchase items with just a few taps. Once you've made your selection, click "Get it now" and in a few moments, you'll see all the details about your courier: name, photo rating, and even his or her exact location in real-time. 

"Whatever you want, I can get it to you," Postmates founder and CEO Bastian Lehmann tells Business Insider. "I can summon [anything] to you within an hour."

Once the courier arrives, you review the charges, decide if you want to leave a tip, and then sign to confirm delivery.

As Lehmann explains, the focus right now is on restaurants that don't deliver, or only deliver in a very small zone. One reason for that is, believe it or not, 63% of restaurants in NYC don't offer delivery. Still, Postmates users can summon anything from food to laptops at the Apple Store to laundry pick-ups. 

There are, of course, other delivery services in New York, but very few, if any, that provide equal value to customers, businesses, and couriers.

For customers, on-demand delivery of anything is pretty unheard of, unless it's from a restaurant. For businesses, they can increase their sales without having to spend a dime. And for couriers, they have access to thousands of delivery orders per day.

Couriers get 80% of the delivery fee, and 100% of the tip. It's also worth noting that while the majority of Postmates's couriers are professionals, about 30% of them in San Francisco are students or just people looking for a secondary source of income, Lehmann tells us. 

Postmates takes 20% from every delivery and also partners with restaurants, like Whole Foods, which pay them a fee for every delivery Postmates brings them. 

You might be thinking, "But what about Seamless and GrubHub? Don't they do the same thing?"

Well, not exactly. 

Seamless and GrubHub, two food delivery companies that recently announced a merger, are basically just web ordering forms, and don't offer their own delivery fleet. 

"Seamless is basically unnecessary," Lehmann says. "They don't add anything to the value of your operations. […] They rely on the fact that you have delivery personnel. If you don't have delivery personnel, you can get orders from Seamless and GrubHub all night long, but you will not be able to fulfill them. So that's a huge problem."

Postmates, on the other hand, is designed to be an infrastructure for an entire city, Lehmann says. 

"We really envision a future where if we control the wheels on the ground, why would a restaurant still do their own delivery service?" Lehmann posits. "If we can be as flexible, more affordable, more cost-efficient to them, why would they even have someone sitting around to do a delivery? That makes no sense."

In order to ensure delivery from high-trafficked restaurants with long lines, Postmates has deals in place with restaurants where it can skip the line, or have the food put aside specifically for Postmates couriers. 

In the last three months Postmates has processed more than $1 million in deliveries from merchants in San Francisco and Seattle. It's currently growing its delivery volume by 20% month over month. 

So what's driving this growth?

"It's very easy to form a habit around it," Lehmann says. "Whenever you have a product that allows a user to form a habit around it, you have a winner.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/postmates-launches-in-new-york-2013-5#ixzz2UtwJOMfr