We're excited to announce our latest investment in Lucky, alongside Unusual Ventures. Lucky is one of the first movers to enable D2C brands to fulfill products to customers all within the same day!

Direct to consumer inventory businesses have become an increasingly competitive space. Changing regulations, increasing privacy awareness, and a war for top marketing talent has put a strain on emerging e-commerce brands to keep acquisition costs low while offering convenient delivery options for the consumer. Large retailers, on the other hand, are increasingly partnering with these brands in an effort to provide a more relevant product offering. Yet while both players move in lockstep towards bridging the online and offline worlds, there has yet to be a bridge between each other, connecting a consumer who discovers a product online and wants that same product in her hand instantly.

Enter Lucky, one of the first movers in the US leveraging this model that connects D2C brands to live inventories of the retailers selling their products. Lucky enables D2C brands to fulfill products to customers within the same day. During checkout, consumers can locate the closest store with the desired product on the shelf and either pick it up or have it delivered in a shorter time frame, using a retailer's existing delivery or BOPIS solutions.

Our motive for investing boiled down to a few key points:

1. Brands do not have to invest time, money, or resources to orchestrate the back-end logistics to offer same-day delivery or buy online-pick-up in-store. Retailers, in exchange, obtain a new sales channel and get to increase their in-store traffic, which often leads to additional upsell opportunities. Lucky has already established key partnerships with major retailers, including Nordstrom and Sephora, and consolidated brands like Steve Madden, which will give them an edge against future competition.
2. The potential network effects are a clear example of what makes Lucky's technology so exciting. When Lucky signs a D2C brand, they tap into the network of retailers they partner with and vice versa. We're picturing a highly scalable model that can grow exponentially over time.
3. Plug and Play partners with some of the world’s largest and leading retailers and we think we can help the company grow.
4. Lucky's founders envision a future where automated two-way communication occurs between brands and retailers. Additionally, their solution offers wins in the sustainability space, where click and collect plus hyper-local delivery models overtake current fulfillment methods.

The Team Behind Lucky

After initially meeting with the two founders of the company, Sneh Parmar and Nafis Azad back in 2019, we were excited to reconnect and see all the progress they have made since.

Both founders have a background in startups and technology. Sneh has experience in venture capital and business incubation, having worked with multiple startups on marketing, fundraising, and growth strategies. Nafis previously founded Waker Group, a software development agency that has worked with Fortune 500 companies and growing startups to help them build innovative digital solutions. We're confident that Lucky is in good hands and will win in what we believe is a vast untapped market. We're excited to see what they can achieve moving forward!