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Business-to-business, full truck load freight transportation start-up BlackBuck has raised $70 million in Series C funding from Sands Capital and existing investors.
The funding will be invested in building technology-led products for the company’s 400-strong customer base and truckers, to scale up operations and double the headcount of its technology team to 120 engineers.
Founded in April 2015 by Rajesh Yabaji, Chanakya Hridaya and Ramasubramaniam, who bring with them a cumulative experience of 25 years in logistics, BlackBuck was conceptualised to make B2B logistics simpler, by addressing the issue of availability of truckers to customers and customers to truckers, ensure fair pricing based on the demand and supply environment, and professionalising services in an otherwise fragmented industry.
“We reduce uncertainties around placement and visibility of vehicle movement during transit and reduce operational costs, through dedicated smartphone apps and web-based portals for customers and truck owners,” Yabaji told BusinessLine . “We make a 15 per cent commission on the total value of the transaction for providing an end-to-end service to both truckers and customers. The average trip value on our platform is ₹40,000 and average kilometres per trip is 1,000-1,500. We have over 1 lakh trucks on our platform, are present across 300 locations in the country and have 125 large corporate customers and 375 SME customers.”
Asian Paints, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Britannia, Godrej, Marico, Jyothy Laboratories and EID Parry are some of its marquee customers.
With the new round of funding, the start-up has raised a total of $100 million since inception. BlackBuck had raised Series A funding of $5 million from Accel Partners and Flipkart in early 2015, and $25 million in Series B round from Tiger Global and Apoletto (DST-Yuri Milner Founder Fund), with co-investment from Accel and Flipkart, in December 2015.
Anand Daniel, Partner, Accel Partners, said: “There is a tremendous opportunity in the intercity FTL (full truck load) segment for a technology player, given that the industry is fragmented and is technologically less penetrated. BlackBuck is uniquely positioned to leverage this opportunity because of its primary focus on technology, data analytics and its marketplace model.”
According to Novonous market research, road freight is the largest transportation segment in India, constituting around 63 per cent of the total freight movement, and is currently valued at $140 billion. Inter-city logistics account for a massive 95 per cent of road freight movement.
“Within one year of operations, BlackBuck became the largest FTL company in the offline and online space. We expect to turn EBITDA profitable in the next two quarters,” Yabaji said.
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