The co-founder and CEO of Ottawa-based last-mile delivery service Trexity admits his latest gambit raised more than a few eyebrows around the office for its boldness.
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Whether it’s wowing high-profile investors with an elevator pitch or wooing well-known media personality Ben Mulroney to be an adviser, Alok Ahuja has a knack for attracting attention to his company.
But the co-founder and CEO of Ottawa-based last-mile delivery service Trexity admits his latest gambit raised more than a few eyebrows around the office for its boldness.
When Ahuja told his employees earlier this year he wanted to launch a promotion that would see Trexity give away more than $100,000 in prizes to new merchants joining the platform, more than a few staffers wondered whether there was some kind of mistake.
“They thought I added one extra zero by accident, and I didn’t,” Ahuja recalls with a laugh. “I said, ‘Guys, this is what it means going all in.’
“We’re a startup. We don’t have all the money in the world. Taking a risk like this was pretty big.”
Still, if Trexity’s founders have proven anything, it’s that they’re not afraid to swing for the fences.
Take last year, for example. Trexity landed a $200,000 investment from a group of U.S. investors that included serial entrepreneur Kim Perell after Ahuja appeared on the season nine finale of Entrepreneur magazine’s online series Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch.
Then there’s the partnership with Mulroney, who first met Ahuja at a Canadian Chamber of Commerce event in Ottawa in 2022. The two immediately hit it off, and the TV host-turned-producer was so impressed with Trexity’s business plan that within months he was sitting on the fledgling company’s advisory board.
Mulroney, in fact, has become such a fan of Trexity he appears in an online video announcing the firm’s new $100,000 Business Boost contest.
The promotion gives any merchant who joins Trexity’s platform between May 15 and Aug. 15 a chance to win a grand prize of $100,000, as well as a series of early-bird bonus draws.
Ahuja says hundreds of new members have signed on since the contest launched last month, adding they are now “competing with one another to outdo themselves” for a chance to capture bonus prizes awarded for reaching specific delivery milestones.
“The merchants have been embracing it,” he says.
While the promotion is driving more revenue to Trexity, Ahuja says it is also meant to “put money back in the hands of those merchants that believed in us.”
Trexity’s chief executive has been meeting with retailers across the country since the contest began and says the response has been “incredible.”
“The feedback is unanimous. They’re saying, ‘Alok, this is something that we wish our cities would do for us. This is something we wish we could apply for. And here you are just doing it.’”
Founded five years ago, Trexity has steadily made a name for itself in the crowded logistics space for its cutting-edge algorithms that quickly calculate the most efficient way to bundle orders and deliver packages.
The 22-person startup charges a flat rate that’s included in the purchase price of an item. Thousands of merchants across Canada – including local retailers such as Brown Bag Coffee Roasters, Assurance Home Care and La Bottega Nicastro – now use its platform.
Backed by more than $6 million in seed funding, Trexity continues to extend its reach as it goes toe-to-toe with much bigger competitors such as Amazon.
In addition to its home base of Ottawa, its network of freelance delivery drivers can now be found in Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, and – as of earlier this year – Hamilton and Oshawa. Ahuja says Trexity expects to enter two more major Canadian cities before the end of the third quarter.
“We’re getting pulled into these markets now,” he explains. “Merchants are saying, ‘Listen, we’ve got other locations. We’ve got tons of friends. They all want this.’”
Trexity tripled its revenues in 2023 compared with the previous year, and Ahuja says the company is on pace to match that growth again this year.
Buoyed by the success of its big-money giveaway, the company is poised to set a new sales record in the second quarter. Never one to rest on his laurels, Ahuja is already batting around ideas for another promo he hopes to launch before the end of 2024.
“I feel the energy we’re getting from this one, and I definitely don’t want it to be a one-and-done.”
