Eurora Enters The Us Market, Appointing E-commerce Heavyweight Chris Lentjes To Drive US Expansion

Eurora Solutions (‘Eurora’ or the ‘Company’), a provider of leading artificial intelligence machine learning (‘AI/ML’) backed cross-border e-commerce compliance platform, announces the appointment of Chris Lentjes as the CEO of the Company’s US operations and the opening of its US headquarters in Miami. Chris brings over 20 years of digital and physical e-commerce logistics experience, having worked at senior roles at Pitney Bowes and DHL.

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A heavyweight who has been at the very forefront of the e-commerce industry
Pitney Bowes is a US global shipping and mailing company that provides technology, logistics, and financial services to more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. Most recently, Chris served as Vice President of Product Management, Delivery & Returns for Pitney Bowes Global e-commerce division and was responsible for developing strategy and delivering transportation and technology solutions for retailers, marketplaces, webshops and partners. Before joining Pitney Bowes, Chris spent 14 years at DHL, the international logistics and e-commerce giant. In his role as the Director of Product Management at the company’s e-commerce arm, Chris focused on simplifying and innovating international B2C e-commerce for retailers, partners and platforms between the USA and the rest of the world.

The appointment of Chris as CEO of Eurora’s US operations follows the Company’s successful US$40 million Series A funding round, which closed in April 2022. As announced by the Company at the time, the funds will be used for product development, potential add-on acquisitions and geographical expansion in the UK, the Middle East and the US, where further rapid and high growth in the sector is expected – having almost tripled in the past decade, global parcel shipping volumes are expected to reach over 260 billion parcels delivered by 2026.

Among Chris’s first tasks as CEO of Eurora’s US operations will be the establishment of a central US office in Miami as well as the building of a best-in-class expert team to drive the roll-out of the Company’s proprietary AI/ML-based platform, which automates tax, compliance and customs services.

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Upcoming Eurora office/hub openings
As part of Eurora’s expansion plans and in addition to establishing a central US office in Miami, Eurora is looking to open a Scientific Research & Innovation Center in Tartu, Estonia, as well as an Engineering Hub in Dubai and a Central UK office in London. All of the above openings are expected to occur in H2 2022. The Company also plans to expand to Canada in the near future.

Eurora’s proprietary AI/ML-based platform
In spite of global supply chain issues, international trade is more popular than ever, and consumers are used to ordering goods from around the world. What they don’t like is being surprised by a large and unexpected tax bill. Eurora is a B2B platform that can be used by online sellers, marketplaces, logistics and postal companies to automatically create electronic declarations for duties and taxes via simple API integration. Using AI and ML, Eurora automatically processes 5,000 requests per second with up to 98% accuracy, the highest level of accuracy, speed, and automation available on the market. It also operates at a fraction of the time and price of hybrid or manual code allocation solutions commonly used today. When consumers are aware of and agree to any applicable taxes upfront, it greatly reduces shopping cart abandonment or package refusal at the point of delivery, both of which are big problems for retailers.

The problems the platform solves
The above is just one example of the platform’s functionality which also supports the efforts of e-commerce businesses to fulfill customer promises and reduce carbon footprints. Moreover, as global trade continues to grow – according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (‘UNCTAD’) international trade is forecast to hit US$28.5 trillion in 2021, 25% higher than in 2020 – Eurora can help merchants fully capitalize on the opportunity this represents by providing solutions to potential pitfalls:

• the need to keep up with ever-changing cross-border regulations – Eurora’s database is constantly updated to incorporate the latest rules and regulations
• mitigating business risk – in 2019, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued almost US$1.3 billion in fines for sanction violations
• increased supply chain costs – according to the Wall Street Journal’s report, in 2021 business costs rose 22%
• the growing cost of returns – according to Pitney Bowes BoxPoll, US online retailers reported an average returns cost of 21% of the order value in April 2022. The National Retail Federation and Appriss Retail also reported that retailers expect to get back about 16.6% of the total merchandise that customers purchased in 2021. That’s a jump from an average return rate of 10.6% in 2020.

Marko Lastik, the founder and Group CEO of Eurora, said: “It is a mark of how far Eurora has come that we are in a position to welcome an executive of Chris’s calibre to the team. Chris has spent more than 20 years at the very forefront of the e-commerce industry; during this time, he has held senior positions with market-leading companies.

“We already have a proprietary e-commerce platform proven to deliver efficiencies and lower costs for merchants. Following Chris’s appointment, we have an e-commerce and transportation specialist to lead our drive into the huge US market, where Eurora shall target rapid expansion, particularly as increased regulatory pressure has resulted in severe setbacks and spiraling delays. Eurora offers a cutting-edge and cost-effective solution, and I look forward to working with Chris as we look to deliver this to the US market.”

Chris Lentjes, the CEO of Eurora USA, said: “I am delighted to be joining Eurora at this exciting stage in the Company’s development. With an established platform in place, a suite of high-impact solutions developed, and growth capital recently secured, Eurora is ideally positioned to help merchants speed up deliveries, reduce costs and at the same time increase customer satisfaction and trust.”

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