Prominent AI-based logistics startup, Locus has reportedly secured $50 million in a new financing round, in a bid to expand its presence. Apparently, the new Series C round was led by GIC, the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund.
Qualcomm Ventures and its existing investors Falcon Edge and Tiger Global Management also marked their presence in the round, bringing Locus’s to-date raise to $79 million.
Sources have confirmed that the new round valued the Indian startup at about $300 million.
The event also saw participation from Angel investors, Amrish Rau, the CEO of Pine Labs, Raju Reddy, the Founder of Sierra Atlantic, Kunal Shah, the CEO of CRED, as well as Deb Deep Sengupta, the Former President and MD of SAP, South Asia.
According to the CEO of Locus, Nishith Rastogi, the company assists its clients in automating their logistics workload in conventionally human labor-intensive tasks, including planning, organizing, transporting as well as tracking of inventories, in an attempt to help them find the best path to a destination. He mentioned that clients such as Licious or BigBasket also need to assign drivers on the basis of the familiarity of the delivery area and traffic, in order to determine the departure times for the delivery.
The CEO further revealed that the startup incorporates proprietary algorithms and deep machine learning to help its clients to move beyond visibility into all these decision-makings.
For the record, the startup, which operates in Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, and the Indian subcontinent has allegedly helped its customers in saving around $150 million in logistics costs and cut down their travel journey by tens of millions of kilometers.
If reports are to be believed, Rastogi has termed the novel funding as insurance money. He claimed that while the startup already makes enough cash, the additional capital would assist Locus in its plans of expanding in additional markets as well as broaden its technology team.
Source Credits
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/02/locus-raises-50-million-for-its-logistics-management-business/