OneRail finishes $12.5 million Seed Round with $6.7 million Late Seed Financing

Orlando, Fla.-based OneRail, a provider of final mile delivery services for enterprise shippers, is continuing to make inroads, with an eye on growth, announcing it completed a $6.7 million round of Late Seed financing and closing out its $12.5 million seed round.

This round of financing followed the closing of its Series Seed financing in the first quarter of 2020, and OneRail said that this most recent investment round was led by Chicago Ventures, and new investor Bullpen Capital, along with participation from other existing investors, including: investors Las Olas Venture Capital and Alpine Meridian Ventures, along with new investors Triphammer Ventures (Alumni Ventures Group), and CreativeCo Capital. 

“The vision for OneRail from day one has been for final mile delivery to function as seamlessly and efficiently as a financial transaction; completely automated with total visibility, real-time decision logic, event-driven notifications, and controls”, said OneRail Founder and CEO Bill Catania in a statement. “In 2020 the OneRail team turned that vision into a reality and now we are poised to scale our business development and marketing efforts to tell the world how they can reduce the cost while increasing the speed and dependability of their final mile delivery operations”

OneRail CTO/COO Jeff Flowers explained that this latest round of financing will allow the company to build on an exceptional 2020 for OneRail, where it was fortunate to rapidly grow its base of retail and distribution customers.

“Shippers are reporting an increased need to find alternatives in order to provide cost-effective and dependable final mile delivery to customers and end-users,” said Flowers. “With this funding, we will also expand our business development efforts where we deliver detailed operational value assessments to retailers and distributors outlining supply chain cost reduction opportunities and new logistical options.” 

When asked what the main benefits of this most recent round of financing for OneRail customers, Flowers observed that OneRail’s Delivery Orchestration Platform is well-positioned to solve many of the challenges that face retailers and distributors looking to improve their final mile delivery operations. 

And he added that this latest round of funding will accelerate its product roadmap and third-party partnerships to support its current and prospective customers. 

“The OneRail Platform is just scratching the surface of how powerful our solution can be for shippers,” he said. “Retail and distribution shippers are faced daily with the decision of how best to deliver products to their customers. Our latest round of financing allows us to further solve these complex issues. The OneRail solution provides a holistic approach for final mile delivery, including software solutions to automate delivery execution, as well as immediate access to a network of more than 5 million carriers and couriers.  This solution is unmatched in the industry.”

Pointing to data from the most recent edition of IBM’s U.S. Retail Index, which noted that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has helped to accelerate the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by approximately five years, OneRail said that this dynamic has caused Retailers, Product Distributors, Health Care Networks, and Supply Chain/Logistics Providers, to quickly adapt their business processes and technologies to meet unexpected new demand.

What’s more company officials observed that OneRail’s growth rate of 5,200% since January 2020 serves as “direct evidence of the shift in consumer shopping behavior, and the resulting commercial demand to create a more dependable and affordable delivery fulfillment solution.”

In December, OneRail and Chicago-based project44, a technology services provider offering standardized, secure Web service API (application programming interfaces) integrations enabling 3PLs and shippers to connect with carriers in real time, announced they established a partnership focused on bringing together first and final mile logistics for shippers.