Founders Everywhere: Murvah Iqbal
Murvah Iqbal is the co-founder & CEO of HIVED, parcel delivery for the 21st century.
Welcome to Founders Everywhere, where we highlight the incredible people behind the companies we’ve backed at Everywhere Ventures, a global pre-seed fund supported by a community of 500 founders and operators.
Delivery services play a vital role in our daily lives, whether for e-commerce purchases, food delivery, or the transportation of essential supplies. Despite their convenience, they face logistical hurdles, environmental concerns, and other challenges that impact efficiency, reliability, and customer satisfaction. HIVED is a UK startup building a parcel delivery network, powered entirely by electricity, for a fast, reliable and uncomplicated delivery experience.
HIVED co-founders and co-CEOs Murvah Iqbal and Mathias Krieger met in 2016 on a university trip to Silicon Valley, where they found a shared passion for big tech startup companies. After graduation, they took that energy and started their first company together, selling advertising on white delivery vans in central London. Based on the GPS trackers inside these vans, they quickly realized the inefficiencies within the entire delivery market, alongside the poor customer experience and demand for eco-friendly deliveries. They pivoted to found HIVED in 2021 and since then they have raised a few funding rounds including their Series A earlier this year and achieved 22% MoM growth since inception. Murvah and Mathias were listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 for 2023 for building the first entirely electric-powered, sustainable, data-driven parcel delivery network.
What sets HIVED apart from competitors?
We operate on an all-electric fleet, which is becoming increasingly more important for the environment and the world, especially with retailers who have strong pressure to reduce their carbon emissions.
Additionally, we are improving the overall delivery experience for recipients, pioneering a relentless consumer-first approach compared to traditional delivery services. If you check out our Trustpilot reviews, you can get a sense of why people love us so much. We’ve also never lost a customer, 100% retention.
What are HIVED’s plans for the future?
We want to be the biggest parcel delivery company in the UK and Europe. There's more to logistics than just parcel delivery and we want to build more features. We’ve delivered millions of parcels and we’re exposed to the amount of packaging involved day-in and day-out, and we would eventually like to build our logistics network reverse compatible, so we can enable circular economies for packaging. There’s a huge amount of opportunity in this space.
What has been one of your biggest challenges founding HIVED?
We started the company when I was 24 and Mathias was 25, which is quite a challenge to take on at that age; how do you scale yourself as a founder, as quick as the growth of the company? Two years ago we were sitting in my apartment delivering parcels and now we’re responsible for hundreds of people. Building a startup is one of the most impossible things and keeping up relentless energy even on the days when you don’t feel like everything is going your way can be tough. It’s so important to maintain and feed off of positive energy.
How has your background shaped you as a founder?
I come from a working class family that had their own small business, so that really engrained the entrepreneurial spirit in me. That being said, I had no exposure to venture capital or the startup world and had to figure it out myself. I’ve always pushed the boundaries of what I can do, whether it be sports, education, or my career. There aren’t many female founders of Pakistani origin and that intrinsically motivates me to be a force and function to break down barriers for others. Young females who look like me can say “oh, she did this, so can I,” which is super inspiring for me to be able to have that impact. My background has really allowed me to gain grit and resilience along the way, which I think is needed to be a founder.
Any book recommendations?
Grit: Why passion and resilience are the secrets to success by Angela Duckworth is a really great book.
Fun fact: I used to be captain of Manchester City Women’s Football Club. I think there are a lot of similarities between being an athlete and being a founder.
Episode 15 of the Venture Everywhere podcast, Vera-fy Your A.I. with Liz O'Sullivan and Sylvia Kuye is out. Listen on Apple, Spotify, Pandora and check out all our past episodes here
