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Ship60

We helped Ship60 find a new competitive positioning and pivot into two new customer segments and business model for their last mile delivery service

#Logistics#Asia Pacific

Company & Background

Founded in 2015, Ship60 is a last mile delivery provider offering 60 minutes instant delivery services, in a massively growing market like Southeast Asia and specifically Vietnam.

Challenges & Needs

The main problems of Ship60 in 2016 were related to the lack of differentiation from other stronger competitors (especially in the B2C food delivery) and slow scaling in that competitive market (which is prone to economies of scale). It became also difficult to convince investors that they were a top 3 player and could get and defend an important market share in the market.

Solutions & Impact

Fast Forward Advisors supported Ship60 while accelerated in VSV, focusing on testing growth on new customer segments (corporate docs and pharmaceuticals), corporate offering definition (especially the PaaS offering), and investment readiness (helping them build a very defensible investment case with all validated operational KPIs).

These messages keep our motivation high and our team going strong

“ Working with FFA has been a great pleasure, during the acceleration program they helped us with a lot of know-how and methodologies. When working together on fundraising, they created several important connections with the investment community “

Huy Phung

“ Working with FFA has been a great pleasure, during the acceleration program they helped us with a lot of know-how and methodologies. When working together on fundraising, they created several important connections with the investment community “

Huy Phung
CEO | Ship60

Company & Background

Founded in 2015, Ship60 is a last mile delivery provider providing 60 minutes instant delivery services, in a massively growing market like Southeast Asia and specifically Vietnam.

Customers of Ship60 are E-commerce businesses such as Lazada (Rocket Internet, Alibaba) as well as retail players such as Vascara (fashion retailer with 100+ stores) and Concung (baby product retailer with 500+ stores). Ship60 is also proving its platform capabilities as a service to logistic companies such as Vietnam Post (VNPost) to which Ship60 provides the technology platform to optimize last mile delivery.

Challenges & Needs

The main problems of Ship60 in 2016 were the following:

  1. Lack of Differentiation: At that time, Ship60 was trying to acquire merchants that were already targeted by well-funded players in the country (Ahamove, Uber, Grab, etc), spending a lot of money and effort in fighting against bigger organizations. We therefore helped Ship60 to identify niches where to focus on (such as temperature controlled deliveries and big corporate accounts)
  2. Slow Scaling: The number of shippers and daily deliveries was lower compared to the performance of other competitors, raising questions and doubts by potential investors on the growth potential of Ship60.
  3. Investment Readiness: Ship60 was not investment ready for a VC funding round, the unit economics were not adding up and it was difficult to convince investors that Ship60 was in the top tier startups in this very competitive market.

Solutions & Impact

We provided the following solutions:

  1. Testing growth on new customer segments: We supported Ship60 in developing and testing the value proposition with the new customer segments (specifically corporate docs and pharmaceuticals) – translated into specific landing pages, presentations and outreach material. The tests created interesting traction that allowed us to create a basis for an interesting differentiation and related investment case.
  2. Corporate offering definition: We supported Ship60 in designing and testing new corporate offering for its PaaS (Platform as a Service) product – from the early offering definition to the first deal closing support.
  3. Investment Readiness: In order to prepare for the company for their demo day and fundraising efforts, we identified all gaps to be solved by the company prior to contacting potential investors, especially the differentiation factors and growth case that would make up for a great proposition. Once ready, we also supported with connecting with some local investors we had in our network.

At the end of the journey we had a great validated growth and investment case for their following seed funding round, with which they created a solid and defensible market share.

They raised a low 7-figure seed round from local private angel investors.