E-logistics startup Pando receives $2 mn in seed funding

Bengaluru-based logistics portal Pando Corp Pvt. Ltd has raised $2 million (Rs 13.08 crore) in a seed round led by Nexus Venture Partners.

The startup, which digitises logistics operations for large corporates, will use the money for product development and fresh hiring.

Pando’s first external round of funding will also see the participation of a clutch of angel investors including Kashyap Deorah of Hypertrack, Girish Mathrubootham of Freshworks, Nishant Rao of Sirion Labs and the ex-LinkedIn India chief executive, and P Balaji of Vodafone.

Pando was founded by Nitin Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar in late 2016. The company claims to have several Fortune 500 companies as its clients.

“This investment is a shot in the arm for the team to continue to reimagine logistics, from being a heavy, cumbersome cost-centre, to being a robust digital foundation to any business. We will continue to focus on products and people, to ease and enable commerce through digital deliveries,” said Pando CEO Jayakrishnan.

According to the company’s estimates outsourced logistics rings in $200 billion of business every year in India. And, Pando was looking to solve a key problem of convergence on the demand (shipper or corporates) side of the ecosystem.

“Pando is enabling enterprises to turn their supply chain management function from a cost-centre to a source of competitive differentiation by providing real-time visibility and seamless digital links across the value chain,” said Nexus Venture Partners co-founder and managing director Sandeep Singhal. He said that the company has global potential.

Pando helps enterprises of all sizes, digitise, monitor and optimise their supply chain operations with its predictive and scalable solution. The tool allows companies to control their fragmented, multi-tiered logistics ecosystems from a single screen.

“Pando gets our entire ecosystem of vendors, co-makers, drivers and customers to follow one standardised digital workflow, allowing us to control and optimise at every step. Pando covers our entire value chain,” said Tankeshwar Baishya, senior director for supply chain at Philips Lighting.

Pando’s chief technology officer Manohar holds over 50 global patents and was earlier with Sandisk as part of their Systems Architecture Group.

“With new-age companies using logistics to differentiate themselves, incumbent executives are looking to logistics as a strategic priority. Logistics is no longer viewed as a necessary-evil, but an opportunity to drive customer acquisition, retention and value,” said HyperTrack’s Deorah.

US-based rival FourKites, which is founded by Indian origin entrepreneurs, had also raised funding recently.

Bengaluru-based Loadshare Networks Pvt. Ltd, which operates a tech platform catering to small and medium-sized enterprises in the logistics sector, had also raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A round led by Stellaris Venture Partners and existing investor Matrix Partners.

Pune-based logistics technology company ElasticRun had raised $7 million from Kalaari Capital and Norwest Venture Partners last April.