[Funding Alert] Logistics Automation Platform Provider Raises $39 Mln Series B Round Led By Tiger Global, Steadview Capital With the new funds, LogiNext said it would look to expand its operations to more geographies, hire more talent across its tech and sales teams while also focusing on developing its machine learning capabilities further.

Logistics automation platform provider LogiNext has raised $39 million in a Series B round led by US-based Tiger Global Management and Steadview Capital, the company said on Friday.

Founded in 2014 by Dhruvil Sanghvi and Manisha Raisinghani - both graduates from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh - the company provides solutions to remove human intervention from logistics and field service operations. Some of its products include cloud-based last mile delivery and artificial intelligence-based route optimization software. While several new start-ups have now come up in the space, Dhruvil says they were the first on the scene to come up with such products. Some of its key competition includes Oracle, JDA Software and Verizon Connect.

The company, which operates on a Software as a Service (SaaS) business model, had last raised a Series A round of $10 million in 2016 from Paytm. It currently has offices in 8 countries and users in 20 countries.

With the new funds, the company said it would look to expand its operations to more geographies, hire more talent across its tech and sales teams while also focusing on developing its machine learning capabilities further.

Profitable and Going Strong

Dhruvil, speaking to Entrepreneur India, said that the company had recently turned profitable on an earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) basis. In terms of revenue, the company has been growing by 200 per cent every year.

In three years, LogiNext said it had helped timely deliver over a billion shipments and now touches 50 million end customers on a daily basis. McDonalds, Decathlon and Singapore Post feature among its marquee enterprise customers.

While the company is headquartered in Fremont, California, the team that develops LogiNext's tech is entirely based out of Mumbai. According to Dhruvil, the fact that their operating costs are low and that nearly 90 per cent of their business comes from abroad, including regions such as North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific, had helped reach the elusive profitability that every start-up so desires.

"In the global trend of transportation and e-commerce, we believe that we have got the right timing. End customers, be it consumers or businesses, are expecting things to reach them faster than ever and our technology platform can help enterprises do just that. We believe we have built the right team and the right business model to help us scale to the next level from here," said chief executive Dhruvil in a statement.

Is there a reason so much of their business is coming from companies abroad? While they retain their focus on India also, Dhruvil said Indian companies are still evolving in their taste and willingness to pay for a completely automation driven software. One of the other reasons is that the margins are much higher for companies in those countries, he said.

"We are very excited by Dhruvil's vision to transform the global logistics market through cutting edge technology products. Loginext has built a strong presence in the large global customers in the last 18 months and continues to grow at a breakneck speed," said Steadview founder Ravi Mehta.

Using the New Funds

Dhruvil said it took them about three months since hitting the market to raise the latest round.

Valued at nearly $100 million, LogiNext said it is contemplating the acquisition of two vendors in its space.

The company currently has a current headcount of about 125, most of which is the Mumbai-based tech team, and the company said it aims to double that number this year.

Apart from the business and team expansion, Dhruvil said they have been working on bringing all their learnings together to build a platform for cross-collaboration of data, which will help companies serve their customers better.

"In the fierce competition for making sense out of huge amounts of location data, LogiNext has already taken the lead and created the product which helps customers massively slash logistics costs and automate the complex logistics operations. Our customer's testimonials speak to that and with this investment we are looking to build an even superior product which will help our customers differentiate from their competitors", said chief technical officer Raisighani.