The Series B Financing round was led by Xianghe Capital, a Beijing VC firm founded by former head of Baidu M&A, Hesong Tang, with participation from Blackhole Capital and existing shareholders MindWorks Ventures and Crystal Stream. The investment round exceeds its previous three rounds of financing, bringing the startup’s total funding to a combined USD 60 million.
With the investment, Lalamove will continue to expand aggressively in Asia, where it plans to launch in an additional 60 cities by the end of 2017. It already maintains the largest service area in Asia for intracity delivery, where its app connects users with more than 500,000 delivery drivers.
“Logistics is a big market—a USD 1.7 trillion market in China—and it accounts for up to 27 percent of GDP for some countries in Southeast Asia; it is underpenetrated by mobile internet,” said Shing Chow, Lalamove founder and CEO. “Our users have said they want faster and simpler ways to send things in their cities and we have proven that we can help them deliver anything in less than an hour.
“The evolution of the logistics industry has not been as rapid as some other markets like communication, but we believe we are at a tipping point where transformation will now happen very rapidly. We will see some amazing companies built this this sector.”
Lalamove’s fast growth was enhanced by key partnerships with the world’s foremost tech companies. In 2016, Lalamove partnered with LINE, one of the world’s leading mobile platforms, to develop the LINE MAN app, which gives users the ability to quickly purchase and receive documents, packages, food, and grocery items in Thailand. The company previously developed enterprise solutions for Google and IKEA as well.
“Manila is the latest expansion of Lalamove in Southeast Asia. This funding will definitely help fuel the aggressive expansion plans we have for the Philippines.” said Albert Go, Lalamove Philippines’s country director. “We aim to establish a dominant presence in on-demand deliveries similar to the rest of Southeast Asia.”
Lalamove currently operates in 45 cities across China and Southeast Asia. “Soon, the Lalamove app and services will be in all first- and second-tier cities and a number of economically viable third-tier cities in China, as well as major cities in Southeast Asia, allowing hundreds of millions of new users to experience the fastest delivery in the world,” Chow said.
“Lalamove is a textbook example of how the internet helped to improve a traditional industry,” said Hesong Tang, founder of Xianghe Capital. “We appreciate the vision and determination of Shing and his team, and believe this rapidly expanding company will become a hugely influential enterprise.”
“Lalamove is not only the first real-time intracity logistics company, it is expected to become the biggest and most successful in Asia, and potentially worldwide,” commented David Chang, founding partner of MindWorks Ventures. “Intracity logistics is a high-frequency enterprise, and will become a very important traffic portal, ensuring its foothold in a massive global market.”
“Crystal Stream looks to further cultivate the intracity logistics market, and is extremely optimistic about Lalamove, its entrepreneurial approach, on-demand delivery capabilities and its excellent execution,” added Wang Mengqiu, managing director of Crystal Stream.