Delaware’s DeliveryCircle is seriously scaling up

Need dinner delivered? Want to brighten up a friend’s day by sending flowers? Don’t have time to pick up your son’s birthday cake?
DeliveryCircle has got your back.
Since launching her online delivery service in February 2014, founder Vijaya Rao has continued to scale her ambitions. “In two to three years I see us as a global brand,” she told us over the summer.

We don’t really care who the merchant is, as long as it's not drugs or cigarettes. Tell us who the merchant is, we pick it up and deliver it.

Rao has spent much of her time searching for and speaking to merchants near and far, preaching the benefits of the delivery-of-anything service.
Unlike GrubHub, an app that lets users select and order food from hundreds of local restaurants, DeliveryCircle has no catalog of merchants and allows consumers to tell its drivers when and where to pick up food, groceries, a smoothie, an online order, auto parts and so on. DeliveryCircle drivers can even pick something up at your house and take it to another home or location.
“We don’t want to dictate. We don’t really care who the merchant is, as long as it’s not drugs or cigarettes,” Rao said. “Tell us who the merchant is, we pick it up and deliver it. We truly want it to be the one stop for any local deliveries.”
Since launching nearly a year ago, the startup has grown substantially, Rao said.

• The startup is now based in the New Castle County Chamber of Commerce’s incubator, the Emerging Enterprise Center.
• DeliveryCircle started its service solely in Delaware. Now, the service has reach in Washington, D.C., northern Virginia, Maryland, Philadelphia and southern New Jersey.
• Six weeks ago, the company hired CFO Robert Ciunci. The company is now looking to hire two regional leads — one based in Washington, D.C., the other based in Philadelphia.
• The service is now available as both a web-based platform and through a mobile app.
• DeliveryCircle is engaging in conversations about seed funding and aggressively raising capital.

Rao said DeliveryCircle works with national brands, as well as small mom-and-pop shops. In Delaware, DeliveryCircle’s clients include Newark Natural Food Store, Image Wine Cellars in Newark, M. Davis & Sons, Inc. in Wilmington, and Paradise Biryani Pointe in Newark, among others.
She’s also proud of the service DeliveryCircle has provided to South Block Juice Co. in Arlington, Va.
“This juicing company had three locations and wanted to expand. The owner pointed out to us that our model allowed them precisely to do that. They were able to focus on expansion,” Rao said. “This opened up a lot of other opportunities for us.”
In 2015, Rao said she sees DeliveryCircle’s reach expanding more in the mid-Atlantic region.
“It’s a very ambitious revenue goal. It’s no longer the concept on the back of a napkin,” Rao said. “We want to scale it up quickly.”