Abris-backed Alsendo acquires majority interest in SaaS specialist Innoship

Innoship and Alsendo entered into a strategic partnership to develop first-class e-commerce solutions for retailers in Central and Eastern Europe. By combining the strengths of both companies, this partnership will accelerate the transition of Alsendo from a reselling shipping business to a technology-driven provider of delivery solutions.

Abris Capital Partners (“Abris”), the ESG transformation specialist private equity investor, has supported Alsendo, a Central European technology shipping solutions business, in acquiring a majority stake in Innoship and teaming up with the founders for building the leading e-commerce shipping technology solutions business in the CEE.

Innoship is a pure SaaS delivery management specialist founded in Romania in 2019, offering advanced technology solutions that optimize last-mile management through data intelligence for over 200 medium and large retailers in Europe. The company will help drive Alsendo’s transition from a shipping reselling business into a technology-driven, SaaS-focused powerhouse. At the same time, Innoship will benefit from Alsendo’s broad regional coverage and expertise in providing comprehensive shipping services for small and medium businesses.

The advanced machine-learning algorithms of the solution analyze the performance of different delivery options across the relevant geographic area and the retailer’s delivery points and automatically allocate each delivery by carrier based on business KPIs improving dramatically the customer experience and decreasing the cost of shipping.

Daniel Nicolae, Andrei Paul, Robert Tanase and Dan Ungureanu, Innoship Co-founders added:

“At Innoship, our purpose has always been to create the best product for our customers to enable them to better manage disruptions, accelerate growth and add new value to their own consumers in today’s rapidly changing world. Our growth so far has been beyond our expectations and now we aim even higher. We are extremely grateful to the customers who are using our innovative technology and support us with feedback, but also to the investors who have guided us in the right direction. We are very excited about the partnership with Alsendo; together with them, we will create the leading e-commerce shipping solutions technology business in Europe and beyond.”

Innoship was set up in 2019 by Daniel Nicolae, Andrei Paul, Dan Ungureanu and Robert Tanase and has previously raised funding from GapMinder, a venture capital fund that invests in Romanian and CEE companies at Seed or Series A stage and from leading business lawyer and entrepreneur Catalin Grigorescu. With this transaction Gapminder VC and Catalin Grigorescu exited their investments in Innoship.

The co-founders will continue as shareholders and executives to run and expand the business of Innoship throughout Europe while taking additional responsibilities at the level of the Alsendo group. Catalin Grigorescu will continue to support the company as a member of Innoship’s Supervisory Board.

Edgar Kolesnik, partner at Abris Capital Partners, added:

“Since acquiring Alsendo, we have been proud to support its dynamic growth     while planning our ambitious buy-and-build strategy. We will continue to capitalize on the strong growth of the underlying e-commerce sector in Europe, as well as investing in the technology platform and pursuing international expansion, as we seek to grow Alsendo further. We will also focus on further strengthening the merged teams and developing management and leadership talent with experience in SaaS.”

Central European investor Abris invested in Alsendo (previously apaczka) in 2020, and has since partnered with the firm’s management team to expand the business organically and through acquisition as it seeks to build the leading technology-driven provider of shipping solutions in Central and Eastern Europe.

The acquiring a majority stake in Innoship follows those of Zaslat – a technology-enabled parcel delivery platform focused on consumers and corporate clients in the Czech Republic and Slovakia – in September 2022, and Sendit, a parcel delivery platform for individual customers in Poland, in 2021. This latest add-on is another step forward for Alsendo in targeting unique technology businesses with a focus on new SaaS products for SMEs and large enterprises.

Aleksandra Zawadzka, CFO of Alsendo, commented:
“We continue to pursue our strategy of transitioning to a technology-driven business model. This transaction will allow us to provide advanced solutions to a broadened universe of clients to support their business activities. It will create a unique platform, offering wide range of tools for e-commerce customers – in particular larger businesses and marketplaces.”

The acquisition of majority interest in Innoship is another step forward for Alsendo in targeting unique technology businesses with a focus on new SaaS products for medium and large enterprises.

The partnership also brings synergies between Alsendo and Innoship, such as through the consolidation of solutions provided to leading marketplaces by both companies offer across European markets.    

Cosmin Ochisor, Partner of Gapminder VC:

“The transaction proves the validity of our investment thesis, which is based on two pillars: genuinely superior technological product, and a strong team. In other words you need both vision and execution in order to build great company, and the team at Innoships excels in both areas, therefore they were able to build a leader in the last-mile delivery market in a less than 2 years, which is impressive in itself as achievement.”

Innoship was assisted in this investment round by a team of lawyers from the law firm bpv GRIGORESCU STEFANICA, led by Catalin Grigorescu (managing partner).