Logistics Unicorn Rivigo Raises $65 Mn In Series E Round

Gurugram-based logistics startup Rivigo has raised $65 Mn in its ongoing series E round led by existing investors Warburg Pincus and SAIF Partners. The company said it will use the funds to further strengthen its technology and network coverage.

Prior to this round, the company has raised $216.2 Mn from investors. The last tranche of $35.6 Mn as part of Series E round was at a valuation of $950 Mn. The company said it has significantly improved its financial metrics across all businesses and aims to be profitable by the end of this financial year. 

Founded in 2014 by Gazal Kalra and Deepak Garg, Rivigo owns and operates over 2,100 trucks and has a pan-India network across 150 locations. It offers pan-India delivery services to ecommerce, pharmaceutical, automobile, cold-chain and fast-moving consumer goods companies. The company said it covers more than 29K pin codes in India. 

Recently, Rivigo launched National Freight Index (NFI) to bring transparency to the largely unorganized logistics sector.

Deepak Garg, founder and CEO, Rivigo, said, “We continue on our mission to make logistics human and digital. Relay trucking is now very well established where relay truck pilots lead better life and customers gets exceptional service. With technology and freight marketplace, we now want to bring relay to every truck in the country.”

In the competitive logistics space, which is poised to touch by $215 Bn by 2020, Rivigo competes with equally strong investor-backed startups such as Blackbuck, Locus, Locanix, ElasticRun, and 4tigo Network Logistics. 

In May, BlackBuck closed a $150 Mn Series D round led by Goldman Sachs Investment Partners and Silicon Valley-based Accel. The fresh funds will be helping BlackBuck penetrate deeper into the market, by on boarding new trucking partners along the existing as well as new transportation corridors. BlackBuck CEO Rajesh Yabaji has claimed that BlackBuck holds over 90% of online market share of trucking in the country. 

The Economic Survey 2017-18 showed that the Indian logistics sector provides livelihood to more than 22 Mn people and improving the sector will facilitate 10% decrease in indirect logistics cost leading to the growth of 5 to 8% in exports.

According to Inc42’s State of The Indian Startup Ecosystem 2018 Report, India had over 900 logistics startups as of November 2018. Between 2014 and 2018, these startups have raised over $1.4 Bn funding across 115 deals. This continuous investor attention and consumer need has given rise to multiple unicorns in the logistics industry itself. SoftBank has backed logistics unicorn Delhivery, which competes with other major players such as unicorn startup BlackBuck and more.

In the Union Budget 2019, the government has allocated INR 100 Lakh Cr over the next five years to build and develop critical logistics and transport infrastructure. At present, draft national logistics policy is under works and is expected to bring down India’s expenditure on logistics to 9% of GDP from the existing 14%.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.