Lithuanian retail tech start-up Traxlo is eyeing the North for a potential UK base, with Manchester emerging as a contender as the firm ramps up expansion of its grocery staffing platform.
Fresh off a €1.6m raise last year, the company initially selected Leeds as its first ‘test hub’ city to pilot its ‘Tasku’ platform in the UK, with further pilots launched across London, Milton Keynes and more recently, Manchester.
The platform is designed to help convenience stores or supermarket retailers to plug staff shortages by offering short, paid ‘tasks’, ranging anywhere from shelf stacking to product scanning, and connecting them with local people looking to bag extra income.
Although this doesn’t involve physical boots on the ground just yet, Traxlo’s co-founder and CEO Paul Vezelis says Manchester is now firmly on his radar as a potential location for a permanent UK base.
But before we get into that properly, how does the ‘Tasku’ platform actually work?
In a nutshell, retailers can request tasks as and when they’re needed through the platform, setting pricing in advance with guidance from Traxlo, with tasks typically ranging anywhere from £3 to £50.
Those tasks are then distributed to local workers after they’ve signed up, who pick and choose what they want to complete. Traxlo manages right to work checks and training, while claiming to remove the ‘legal and administrative burden’ from retailers.
So why was Leeds selected as the first UK city to pilot the platform with independent and franchise convenience stores, and why is Manchester now part of that expansion story?
Vezelis says the decision was driven by what he describes as a “collision” of factors across both cities, from access to students and universities, to growing city populations and close proximity to supermarket clients and distribution hubs.
On what a ‘test hub’ means in practice, he explains: “It means that we have a good density of gig workers and opportunities for them, then we scale from that point.
“At the same time, we bring together a cluster of partner stores and it clusters income opportunities, then we expand from there. That’s what we mean by ‘test hub’.”
The story so far
The expansion into cities like Leeds and Manchester marks the latest stage in Traxlo’s growth journey, with the business initially born out of an accelerator run by venture capital firm Antler in Stockholm back in 2020.
But Vezelis’ entrepreneurial story started much earlier. At 13, he picked up an autobiography by Richard Branson, which sparked his interest in the world of business, and by the age of just 16, he was already dabbling in setting up his own ventures.
A few years later, after working across tech, AI and retail roles in Lithuania, he spotted a bubbling issue in the retail market.
“Companies are optimising for store operations and tech solutions, but to run a store today – until the robots take over in a few years – there is still a huge labour need in stores from physically putting stuff on shelves, cleaning stores, to retrofitting shelves,” he explains.
“There weren’t many businesses or start-ups dealing with this, or trying to improve the lives of retailers on the labour side.”
That issue with staffing eventually sparked the idea behind Traxlo and the Tasku app.
“The problem is a lot of tasks are not being completed each day in stores for various reasons, but a lot of it is because of a lack of hands. In retail, most people who want to work full-time in a grocery store already do.
“But there is a huge pool of people, who have two, three or four hours free in the evening or even the morning, and could exchange these hours to complete a task for a reward. It unlocks a completely different pool of people for retailers to get help when they need it.”
The idea to connect local gig workers to retailers began to take shape after he attended an Antler event, thanks to an invite from a friend, shortly after finishing his master’s degree.
He signed up for Antler’s intensive accelerator programme the same evening and, following several interviews, was invited to Stockholm to start work on his idea.
“It wasn’t a fully developed idea at that point, I just knew retail quite well and wanted to figure out what we could do to help retailers with this labour shortage,” he explains.
Since building out the platform with co-founder Almantas Zemblys, the company has raised more than €2.7m in funding from investors including Coinvest Capital and early backers Antler, Iron Wolf Capital and Red Pill VC.
Traxlo now claims to have 30,000 registered workers on its platform and works with clients including Carrefour, REWE Group and Żabka.
Expansion and a potential UK base in the North?
With a small team of 11 full-time staff, primarily based in Vilnius in Lithuania, Vezelis says the wider headcount is closer to 20 when including “several market expansion advisers”.
“Our technical headcount is pretty tight as we run a lot of the business on automations and AI at the moment. We are less than 20 people overall but we do have a number of support roles, which are not full-time.”
As the UK rollout of the Tasku platform accelerates, much of his time is now spent travelling between cities, whether he finds himself on planes across Europe or on trains across the UK.
He says Traxlo is also part of the UK’s Global Entrepreneur Programme, which supports ‘high-growth’ international tech companies looking to scale in the UK, helping to “open some doors” across the country’s tech ecosystem.
But it raises the question about where Traxlo might establish a more permanent presence in the UK.
“I think Manchester could be the place for a partial office. We’ve still not decided on London or Manchester, both seem viable in terms of government support, the cost of salaries and everything else.
“But we are definitely expanding, with a real presence.”
For now, the UK is playing a “crucial role” in Traxlo’s next stage of growth.
“It is the biggest market we have entered – it is also the most expensive market we’ve entered, so we are investing heavily. Success here would establish quite a strong precedent for future expansion across Europe.
“If all goes well in Europe, the next step is the United States. But right now, we are fully focused on the UK.”
