Lula Closes Seed Round Funding to Enable 30-minute Delivery from Thousands of Convenience Stores Nationally
Lula, Inc. receives investment from top global institutional investors including Exelon Corporation, SOSV, Plug & Play Ventures, and Juno Capital.
Lula, headquartered in Philadelphia, PA., is a technology company that transforms convenience stores into last-mile micro-fulfillment centers. The company was founded in 2020 by Drexel University graduates Adit Gupta and Tom Falzani, who attempted to bring Gupta’s family’s shuttered convenience store in South New Jersey online amidst the pandemic with no success. According to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), there are ~150,000 convenience stores in the U.S., two-thirds of which are independently operated with 93% of Americans within a 10-minute drive of any one of them. However, just under half of the North American c-stores offer delivery, compared to over 80% of European, Australian, and Asian stores. The team quickly realized the tremendous market opportunity to build a nationally scalable instant-needs delivery service without the laborious task of re-building micro-fulfillment centers.
Founded by two technologists, Lula aims to use innovative techniques to digitize existing convenience store inventories, ultimately making life easier for c-store operators. They enable 30-minute delivery for stores by syncing inventories across all popular delivery platforms, including Uber EATS, Postmates, Grubhub, Doordash, and Lula’s subscription-based marketplace. Customers can find virtual store listings on these platforms under the “convenience” section, labeled as “Lula Convenience Store.” Store operators can seamlessly manage sales, orders, and all inventory from a single platform – eliminating the problem of needing 5+ tablets to manage last-mile delivery. Partnering stores see a 30% increase in revenue by delivering their existing 3,000+ products within a 10-mile delivery radius. Lula can readily onboard stores remotely in all 50 states in the U.S. market.
Alongside Exelon Corp., Lula also received investment from SOSV, Plug and Play Ventures, and prominent angels. SOSV is a global venture capital firm providing multi-stage investment to startups solving challenging problems with disruptive solutions. Plug and Play Ventures is the world’s largest early-stage investor, accelerator, and corporate innovation platform with global headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. SOSV & Plug and Play Ventures were early investors in Rappi, Google, PayPal, Dropbox, JUMP, Honey, Kustomer, and Guardant Health.
Lula is currently serving convenience stores in New York, New Jersey, Florida, and its hometown, Philadelphia. The company has already seen significant growth with customers ordering daily, many of whom come back to order again. Lula plans to use the investment to grow the existing team and expand nationally in new markets through 2022. With a daily growing number of partners, the team is impacting the c-store community by democratizing e-commerce for stores that may traditionally not have the means to deliver online.
About Lula: Headquartered in Philadelphia, Pa., Lula provides carbon-neutral delivery solutions for convenience stores, pharmacies, and CPG brands that do not have a secondary sales channel, offering the first multi-vendor 30-minute delivery platform and a commitment to building a cleaner, more sustainable world. Learn more about Lula at www.luladelivery.com
