Tommaso Tamburnotti (pictured on the left, Reuben Philip Abraham centre, Augustin Ceyrac on the right) is a Co-Founder of Easyship, a platform that offers on-demand logistics solution to eCommerce sellers. Tommaso started his career in investment banking, working for Nomura, in the equity derivatives team based in London.
After that, he spent 2 years as Marketplace Director at Rocket Internet, setting up the team and operations in Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
Easyship is currently in Blueprint’s first batch.
What is your startup?
Easyship is an online platform that provides logistics solutions to all companies selling online. We remove the problem of shipping offering an on demand pick-up, packing, shipping, and tracking.
Before, when a retailer was selling a product online, it needed to pack the item, choose the best courier to ship based on cost, reliability, and delivery time, print all the shipping labels and commercial invoice, and drop the order at the post/courier office for shipping.
Now, with Easyship, the retailer can simply request a pick-up from our cloud interface, and within 2 hours we will go to pick-up the item at the client location, bring it to our fulfillment centre and arrange the all shipping process, choosing the cheapest and most reliable shipping solution.
Our strength is in the shipping algorithm that automatically select the best shipping solution for each order, based on destination, product type, and dimensions, so that our clients save money and time.
Sometimes they ask us how do we differentiate from Hong Kong Post or couriers like DHL. The answer is that we don’t compete with them, rather we use them. We are not a shipping company, we are a technology company, and our technology enables our clients to optimize the shipping decision, suggesting the right shipping company for every occasion.
How did you come up with this idea?
Together with my co-founders, Augustin and Reuben, I was working at Lazada, the leading eCommerce platform in South-East Asia. In September 2013, I was called to Hong Kong to build the regional cross-border marketplace team. The plan was to have as many eCommerce sellers from Hong Kong and China selling on Lazada to our clients in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines.
Sales grew rapidly, but soon the problem of shipping internationally showed up and we found ourselves dealing with a very unstructured and fragmented logistic industry. Our sellers were struggling, choosing which shipping courier to use and spending hours in packing every day.
Our sellers were spending more than 40% of their times to pack their items, choosing which out of the top 30 couriers to use, preparing all the shipping material, and track the status of the orders shipped. It was a mess.
Suddenly we realized the huge value added of a stable and reliable logistic platform and we decided to create Easyship.
Our mission is to remove the headache of shipping from our clients, so that they can save time to dedicate to grow their business and generate more sales.
Who are you targeting and how big is the market in HK/Asia?
Hong Kong is one the biggest trading hub in the world, especially important in the eCommerce world. According to the latest Asia Index there are more then 10,000 companies based in Hong Kong that are selling online, more than 240M parcels are shipped every year to over 200 countries worldwide. And this is growing over 19% YoY. We are talking of a market of USD 5 billion per year, just for Hong Kong.
Our main targets are online traders, selling on Ebay, Amazon, Alibaba, that every day receive orders from all over the world, and want to save time and money outsourcing the shipping handling to specialists like us.
What are your future plans for your startup?
The company started in January 2015. In less than 100 days we developed the technology, run a beta version, and have shipped more than 1,000 orders to over 6 countries. Now we are raising funds in order to scale up operations, increase the team size, and invest in technology. Next step is to expand to other countries in Asia.
1 Benefit and 1 Challenge in the HK startup scene?
Hong Kong offers top-class logistics infrastructure and knowledge. It definitely is the place to be if you want to work for a logistic-related business.
One of the biggest challenges is the limited availability of tech developers and coders.
