Capital A Launches $25 Mn Fund, Marks First Investment In Logistics Startup RoaDo

Early-stage venture fund Capital A has announced the launch of a fund with a proprietary corpus of $25 Mn. The company has also invested in B2B logistics startup RoaDo, marking its first investment. 

Founded in 2018 by Ankit Kedia, Capital A offers equity capital, engagement capital and network capital to early-stage startups. With the announcement of a $25 Mn proprietary fund, they plan on investing in 8-10 startups with ticket sizes ranging from $50k to $500k. 

Founded in 2017, RoaDo is a cloud-based platform that offers an ‘operating system’ for logistics companies. According to the startup, the plug-and-play platform can be activated in 5 minutes on a smartphone without the requirements for any other hardware.

Using the platform, logistics businesses can manage their transportation, logistics, warehousing, container management, enterprise mobility, freight management, Trucks, value-added services, fleet management supply-chain, and tracking.

“Logistics is considered to be the backbone of any country’s economy. In India, the development of this sector is being seen as the enabler in driving the country towards becoming a global manufacturing and service hub. The government is aiming to bring down the cost of logistics to 10% from the current 14.4% within the next 4 years which will make the manufacturing sector competitive at the international level,” said Ankit Kedia, founder of Capital A, while speaking about the investment. 

“To achieve this, there is a need for a new generation of service providers who integrate infrastructure, technology and innovation to create solutions that help customers reduce operational costs and increase service efficiency. RoaDo perfectly suits the bill with its vision of digitizing the B2B supply chains in the country,” continued Kedia. 

India’s logistics sector was worth $160 Bn in 2019 and employed over 22 Mn people directly. It is expected to be worth $215 Bn by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 10%. According to Statista, the value of the Indian third-party logistics market is projected to reach $6 Bn in 2025.

“The logistics costs are much higher compared to any of the other major economies and until we transform the supply chains through digitization, we won’t be able to optimally use the resources and leverage the potential,” said Murugan Manoj Kumar J, founder and CEO of RoaDo.

Just last week, Indian Logistics unicorn Delhivery filed a DRHP for an INR 7,460 Cr IPO. Founded in 2011, the Gurugram-based startup offers logistics services such as express parcel transportation, LTL and FTL freight, reverse logistics, cross-border, B2B & B2C warehousing, end-to-end supply chain services and technology services. 

Last month, Intracity logistics startup Porter had raised INR 750 Cr (approx $100 Mn) in its Series E funding round led by Tiger Global Management and Vitruvian Partners.