Exclusive: Parcelled co-founder moves on to Headout

Prateek Bhandari, co-founder of on-demand logistics service Parcelled, has moved on from the company to join US-based Headout as head of marketing for Europe.

Bhandari is an alumnus of IIT Bombay, and has previously worked with Housing.com.

An email query sent to Bhandari did not elicit a response at the time of writing this report. Headout is an on-demand marketplace for tours and activities, founded by Varun Khona, Suren Sultania and Vikramjit Singh.

According to VCCEdge, the startup received seed investment of $1.8 million from 500Startups, Arena Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Version One Ventures and other individual investors in April last year.

WhatsApp's Neeraj Arora and Snapdeal's Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal also participated in this round.

In June, Parcelled pivoted its business model, outsourcing its delivery services to third-party vendors.

With this step, the company exited its core area of operations. It planned to operate like an online booking agent, focusing on the technology platform only. As a part of the move, the company let go of most of its last-mile logistics operations staff and reduced its delivery fleet.

Parcelled, run by NAXR Logistics Pvt. Ltd, had secured an undisclosed amount of funding from logistics firm Delhivery and data analytics firm Tracxn Labs in July 2015. Four months later, the company raised $5 million (about Rs 32 crore) in a fresh round of funding led by logistics services company Delhivery with participation by Tracxn.

According to persons familiar with developments at the firm, it had been trying to raise funds to sustain its operations, but was forced to outsource delivery services after it failed to raise funds.

It was founded in January 2015 by Bhandari, Xitij Kothi, Abhishek Srivastava, Nikhil Bansal, and Rikin Kachhia. It had a team of 150 persons last year.

In the logistics segment, GoJavas, operated by QuickDel Logistics Pvt. Ltd, has already suspended operations. In February this year, Zippon.in, an on-demand logistics aggregator for relocation services, shuttered due to its inability to raise fresh funds.

Startups belonging to sectors such as logistics, marketplace for grocery delivery and road transport have been reeling under the funding crunch, leading to either shutting down of operations of pivots from B2C to B2B.

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