theKarrier, an intra-city aggregator for mini trucks, raises Rs 1.5 cr in seed funding

Logistics startup theKarrier, an on demand truck service focusing on intra-city movement has announced that they have raised Rs 1.5 Cr from Sol Primero, Outbox Ventures and Nikunj Jain. Started in December last year, theKarrier was co-founded by IIT and PESIT graduates Aravind Sanka, Pavan Guntupalli and Rishikesh Ramanath.

What's up at theKarrier?

The startup is currently operational in Bangalore with access to more than 300 vehicles and is doing close to 1,000 orders per month, with an expected 70% month on month growth. The team has grown since start of operations last December and now has 20 full time employees now onboard. They currently have 25 plus clients which include the likes of Delhivery and Flipkart. Bookings can be done through their app or on their website. The startup claims that their confirmation time is less than 45 seconds and lead time is less than 45 minutes. The technology also allows for live tracking of the vehicle. Pavan adds,

We track utilization of vehicles in our network. So when we started out in December it was two hours per month per vehicle. We have been able to improve it to 25 hours per vehicle per month.

Read the completer story of theKarrier

Aravind believes that the primary pain point in this segment is getting the right vehicle at the right time, place and price. He adds that the technology at theKarrier and the focus on improving the vehicle utilization and providing exceptional professional services at affordable prices differentiates them from the rest. Sol Primero has an interesting portfolio and experience in the transportation segment which theKarrier is looking to benefit from.

Where will the funding go?

theKarrier will use the proceeds from the funding to fuel its expansion plans. It plans to be operational in five cities by the end of this year, launching a new city every month for the rest of this year. It also plans to expand its team of 20 by adding more employees in the business development and technology functions.

As part of this transaction, one of the co-founders of Sol Primero, Presha Paragash will be joining the board of theKarrier. She says,

Unlike the taxi market, the constraint here is not on the supply side (availability of the fleet) but the ability to capture demand. theKarrier has demonstrated the ability to do so by leveraging their experience and technology and scaling up quickly in a very short span of time.

theKarrier had a functional driver facing mobile app and recently came out with a consumer facing mobile app for Android users. An iOS app is also in the pipeline. They are also planning to expand their fleet to 1000 and include more variety of vehicles in the near future.

The segment and the funding

The last mile delivery segment is estimated to have a market size of US$10-12 billion and theKarrier aims to make the last mile intracity logistics space for trucks more organised. The sector is highly fragmented with almost 85% of the market made up of individual truck owners who have one to three trucks. The truck owners ability to reach consumers and businesses directly is low and theKarrier aims to improve this going forward.

There are many players, both local and international in this segment trying to tackle the logstics pain point. Of them, some notable players in this sector are Gogovan from HongKong, Blowhorn, Shippr, LOTrucks, Zaicus, Quifers and ReturnTrucks. There is a lot of interest in this sector from the investor side as well. Blowhorn had raised a seed fund from Unitus Feed fund in November last year.