Deliverect

Deliverect connects businesses with customers through delivery.

The story so far

Deliverect was founded in 2018 by Jan Hollez, Zhong Xu, Jelte Vrijhoef and Jerome Laredo, who combined their long-standing industry expertise with a shared passion for technology which improves and adds value to the hospitality sector.

Deliverect is integrating third-party food delivery platforms with multiple restaurant POS systems, automating delivery so it can be managed more efficiently. Deliverect's purpose is to be the backbone of global online food ordering and delivery, helping businesses of all sizes with their online channels by automating their operations, solving their biggest pain points. The company's ambitions, too, are big and bold: to empower restaurants around the world to set up online food ordering, connecting them to their customers. On top of that, they're passionate about building a happy and satisfied customer base. To remain focused, the Deliverect team aims to keep a healthy balance between speed and quality.

The Deliverect culture and values are as important to the company as the services they provide. Their commitment to creating a strong company backbone is central to their success. Every emplyee's opinion matters, and the spirit of working together on shared projects and mixing teams is a part of their own internal operations.

OMERS Ventures invested in Deliverect in 2020.

Themes

Infrastructure Software

Founded

2018

OMERS First Investment

2020

Check out this post to learn more about why we chose to invest in Deliverect.

ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Zhong Yuan Xu

As the CEO of Deliverect, which was founded in September 2018, Zhong is connecting food delivery platforms with restaurants’ POS system. Deliverect is helping the hospitality industry by providing user-friendly and innovative software.

From the age of 17, Zhong started his first company, building websites for restaurants. This experience made his passion for mobile, SAAS and cloud technologies even greater. Zhong graduated with a M.sc. degree in software engineering (2009), after which he immediately started working for the start-up Siruna. After that he worked as a senior engineer for EVS Broadcast, where he created mobile and cloud solutions for customers such as the London Olympics, UEFA and BBC. After gaining experience in these companies, Zhong founded his first business in 2012, together with his co-founder Jan Hollez. This SaaS company, formerly called POSIOS, was acquired by Lightspeed in 2014. Zhong grew out to be the Global director of hospitality at Lightspeed, a company that helps the hospitality industry with their platform and is available in over 100 countries.

“Our vision is all about connecting the restaurant with their customers - we are here to help restaurants achieve this mission. Our products make your life easy so that you can spend less on systems and do what you love. That philosophy runs through everything that we do.”

ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Jan Hollez

Since September 2018, Jan Hollez has been focusing on the products that power his new startup Deliverect. As the company’s CTO, he leads the teams and drives the vision that allows Deliverect to create a user-friendly platform to help restaurants connect multiple delivery platforms to their POS.

Jan Hollez has constantly been striving for the best technical solutions. Building complex products and scaling product teams while motivating people has always been part of his career path. His career started at the university by doing research and building demonstrators in location-based services and home automation. After graduating from Ghent University with a M. sc. degree in Computer science (2004), Jan was one of the first to join the start-up Siruna, where he worked as a software engineer. Later, Jan worked for EVS as a team lead to transition their software stack to new technologies like cloud and mobile. In 2012, he co-founded POSIOS which was acquired by Lightspeed in 2014. At Lightspeed, he was directing the team of developers to create software that brings customers and restaurant owners closer.

“We have been working in the hospitality business for many years, which gave us valuable insight into the challenges restaurateurs face. We noticed that restaurant owners were struggling to manage their online delivery platforms and we wanted to help them with Deliverect.”

ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Jelte Vrijhoef

Writing software since 1999, Jelte Vrijhoef obtained his bachelor’s degree in business management in 2009. After graduating, Jelte gained experience as a software architect at InterWord, where he developed software for a range of Dutch state companies. In 2014, he co-founded bonchef.nl, the Netherlands’ second biggest online restaurant management system. It is here that Jelte first got acquainted with Zhong Xu and Jan Hollez, who were working for Lightspeed POS at the time. In 2018, Zhong, Jan and Jelte founded Deliverect, a software company that integrates delivery platforms in restaurants’ POS system, ending operational delivery management issues."

ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Jerome Laredo

With over 20 years of experience in technology leadership, Jerome Laredo guides Deliverect with their mission to make delivery easy for restaurants and ghost kitchens. He has a wealth of knowledge about business strategy and international commerce in EMEA and Asia through his former work experiences. Under his direction, Deliverect continues to help the foodservice industry to grow and future-proof their businesses for the delivery era.

Jerome holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Ottawa and a Master's degree in International Business from HEC Montreal. He started his career by holding sales and marketing roles at Nstein Technologies Inc., TATA Communications Ltd, and IXIASOFT Inc. Soon he worked for Atex Group Ltd. in the roles of VP Sales for EMEA and Regional CEO for Asia Pacific. More recently he worked for Lightspeed POS where he built their European business both through organic growth and acquisitions, managing more than 300 employees in 5 offices. He was also part of the leadership team that took the company public in March 2019.

Jerome met Zhong and Jan during their working relationship at Lightspeed and continued their quest of helping restaurants with Deliverect. In addition, Jerome has been involved as a venture partner in a number of start-ups in Singapore and London. "