Just in case you were wondering — that under all this investment fiasco, which sector is getting most of the money — it is logistics. And to testify what I just noted, Rivigo, which is Gurgaon based end to end logistics solution provider, has gulped in a staggering $30 Million in a round led by SAIF Partners.
Along with SAIF Partners, many other investors also invested in this round of funding, but the company has not revealed the name of those other investors.
With this fresh capital coming to the company, it will use the funds to scale up its operations. It will also use the money to expand its technology team. The company’s target is to grow 10x in the coming year.
Founded in 2014 by Deepak Garg and Gazal Kalra, Rivigo claims to reduce 50% of the delivery time to clients. It is working with companies across various sectors, including, e-commerce, fast moving consumer goods, automobile, pharmaceuticals and cold chain space.
Earlier, in May, the company had raised $10 million from SAIF Partners in Series A round of funding. Prior to that, in the seed funding round, the company received investment from Singapore Post.
Commenting about the investment, Deepak Gaur, Managing Director, SAIF Partners India, said,
The tech-enabled logistics space in India is robust and has tremendous potential. We also anticipate greater growth for this segment in view of the impending goods and services tax bill. Rivigo has immense scope to serve the large opportunity space with its unique business model.
We were particularly impressed by their smart use of tech and unique operating model that ensures high driver satisfaction, reliability and unprecedented delivery times.
As for competition, Rivigo will find itself competing against the likes of equally well-funded logistics startups like BlackBuck, which recently raised $25 million in its Series B round of funding led by Tiger Global.
The Porter is another such venture, and secured $5.5 million from Sequoia Capital India, earlier in June this year. Similarly, Moovo — grabbed an angel round from Yuvraj Singh’s YouWeCan Ventures.
Other startups getting substantial traction and capital backing in this space include Nandan Nilekani invested Fortigo, Zishan Hayath and Snapdeal founders-backed Shadowfax and Japan’s Rebright partners-backed Lets Transport.
While startups have been coming up and gulping down investments, larger companies and some of India’s bigger startups too have jumped into the bandwagon. In terms of more established business houses, automotive behemoth Mahindra announced the launch of an online platform named SmartShift that connects cargo owners and transporters., virtually acting as an online marketplace for intracity logistics.
And while Snapdeal invested into GoJavas, Flipkart bought back significant portion of their logistics arm from WS Retail. The latter has also announced plans to invest as much as $2-$3 Billion in improving its logistics infrastructure.
