The right connection

UDroppy, which recently raised $Im in a seed funding round, helps online retailers in the initial supply chain set-up process

What is the core business model of uDroppy?

uDroppy has been created to be the missing piece of the puzzle. Our experience in creating and managing e-commerce stores led us to understand a simple problem of the digital retail industry. Whoever decides to launch an e-commerce venture today, can create it easily thanks to the e-commerce platforms (i.e. Shopify or Woocommerce). They can acquire traffic in a couple of clicks using Facebook, Google or influencers. However, supply chain set up is still extremely difficult and time consuming. uDroppy solves this problem, connecting e-commerce owners to suppliers. uDroppy was founded in 2018. It has recently secured a $1m seed funding round. The round is led by Jason Calacanis, a famous Silicon Valley Angel investor (Uber, Robin Hood, etc.). Together with Jason, Launch Syndicate and Sequoia Capital participated in the round.

Sequoia has secured its investment using its scout programme, led by Marco Zappacosta, founder of Thumbtack, a $3bn unicorn. uDroppy has 23 employees and has just opened a new office in Dubai to expand in the MENA region after having established operations in the EU and US.

What convinced you of the need to establish uDroppy?

When you launch an e-commerce venture, you have many areas to take care of. You must create your products, you need to set up your supply chain, distribution channel, market your product and eventually, make sales. It’s extremely difficult. You need a lot of knowledge and experience, otherwise failure is around the corner.

We created uDroppy to help entrepreneurs. We want to offer our help and experience in supply chain set-up to see more people succeeding in this fantastic business.

Tell us about your plans for the Middle East. Are there any specific high growth areas?

On one hand, the Middle East region is