The social on-demand courier service company has just raised 900.000 euros in an important round of financing

After its successful launch in other cities, several awards and obtaining an injection of 900.000 euros through a recent round of financing, the social courier service company Koiki plans to start its implementation in Bilbao.

Specifically, the premises of the Down Syndrome Foundation in the Bilbao neighbourhood of Begoña will be the first Koiki distribution centre in the capital of Bizkaia. It will be, therefore, from these premises from where the “koikis” will make the delivery and collection of parcels and couriers. Later, the service provided by the “koikis”, with their characteristic green caps and t-shirts, will be extended to other neighbourhoods through agreements with social organizations that join this initiative.

Aitor Ojanguren, founder of Koiki, aspires to have six centralized distribution points in Bilbao. This entrepreneur from Bilbao has already started the first contacts with other social entities to reach a collaboration agreement and start his expansion in Bizkaia. The company currently has 30 centresand 87 distritutors attached to its network.

Koiki was born in 2014 in Madrid at the initiative of Aitor Ojanguren as a social innovation project that pursues three fundamental objectives. On the one hand, it aims to employ vulnerable groups in order to reduce their high unemployment rates. On the other, it aspires to obtain income for associated social entities. And finally, it aims to contribute to reducing the environmental impact of courier delivery tasks. The promoter of Koiki Euskadi considers its expansion viable to cover around 80% of the volume of distribution created by electronic commerce throughout the State.

Awards

Koiki’s logistics organization is based on the collaboration with the networks of social centres in the cities where it operates, through which it provides a proximity home service, or “last mile”, for the delivery and collection of packages. This type of messaging distribution solution, which offers the aforementioned economic, social and environmental returns to the citizen environments where it has been launched, has been recognized by various programs of support to social entrepreneurship. Specifically, in 2015 it received the European Investment Bank award for the best European Company for Social Innovation and, in 2016, it obtained the international B-Corporation certification that accredits those companies that integrate social and environmental values.

At the end of 2016, a group of investors have provided another important recognition to Koiki’s management model by broadly supporting the latest round of financing carried out by the company in order to finance its growth plans. Thanks to the concurrence of five large investment funds in the field of social economy, Koiki has managed to raise 900.000 euros; this will make possible to strengthen and improve the technology with which it works and to promote a significant deployment of a network of centres in the main cities.

Within that financing round, Seed Capital Bizkaia has become the referential investor through its Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation Fund. The Creas and Ship2B funds, besides two of the most relevant funds on the European scene, the French Phi Trust Partenaires and the Italian Oltre Venture, have participated in it, together with other private investors.