Logistics tech startup Pando raises Series A led by Chiratae Ventures

Pando, a provider of networked logistics management software, has raised $9 million in a Series A funding round led by Chiratae Ventures.

The round also saw participation from Siemens-backed Next47, existing investor Nexus Venture Partners, angel investors such as VMware India’s vice president of technology Ramkumar Narayanan, Indifi founder Alok Mittal and CEO, and co-founder of xto10x Ventures Saikiran Krishnamurthy, a company statement said.

With this funding round, the company has raised over $11.3 million to date, the statement said. Previously, the company had raised $2 million in a seed round led by Nexus Ventures Partners.

“This investment allows us to continue to reimagine the way freight networks operate. We will continue to deepen our network offering in India, while scaling in select strategic markets internationally, investing in technology and talent, and enhancing our transaction capabilities by working closely with our vendor-partners,” Nitin Jayakrishnan, co-founder and CEO of Pando, said.

Founded by Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar in 2017, Chennai-based PandoCorp helps businesses such as Britannia, Marico, Philips and Tata automate and optimise their freight management and connects them to logistics vendors and aggregators. Jayakrishnan had earlier co-founded a logistics company iDelivery Tech Solutions, which he quit before founding Pando, while Manohar worked with SanDisk at multiple capacities.

Generally, Pando gets into multi-year commitments to manage a company’s freight network and gets paid on the number of transactions and sales on the platform.

“(The) global logistics (market) is going through a disruption and large enterprises require a platform that can help them leverage these market changes to scale faster. Pando has helped shippers and transporters address this need through a full-stack solution. Their quality of execution at marquee customers, where Pando has become indispensable within a few months of adoption is remarkable. This convinced us to partner with them,” TC Meenakshisundaram, founder and managing director of Chiratae Ventures, said.

Bengaluru-based Chirate Ventures is one of the first specialist technology investors in India's early-stage market. The firm typically invests at the seed and Series A stages across sectors such as consumer media and technology, SaaS (software as a service) and health-tech. It has invested in more than 80 companies till date. 

“The global logistics market is ripe for change,” Lak Ananth, managing director at Next47, said. “India is a huge market with unique infrastructure challenges -- this represents a promising opportunity for local startups. Pando’s platform has already attracted several high-profile customers and we are excited to partner with them to expand their reach.” 

Logistics startups have been gaining a lot of traction lately. Last month, Pune-based logistics solutions company Xpressbees raised $9.9 million in a Series D round from Chinese internet giant Alibaba. During the same time, Gurugram-based Ecom Express, which provides end-to-end technology enabled logistics services, also raised $36 million from CDC Group. Logistics platform Rivigo Services was in line to raise $20 million in a growth round (Series F) from returning investors.