Siemens’ investment arm Next47 has made its first direct investment in India, in a $9 million round in supply chain management software provider Pando.
The round was led by Chiratae Ventures, along with existing investor Nexus Venture Partners. The German conglomerate to date has only taken indirect exposure in India by backing venture capital funds including Blume Ventures.
Angels including VMWare India MD Ramkumar Narayan, Alok Mittal, CEO of Indifi, and Saikiran Krishnamurthy of xto10x Ventures also participated in the round. Pando has raised $11 million across two rounds of funding.
“India is a huge market with unique infrastructure challenges that many other technology companies have struggled to crack – Pando’s full-stack platform is global in its approach but can easily be localized and is a key differentiator in this market,” said Lak Ananth, Managing Director, Next47.
Founded by Abhijeet Manohar and Nitin Jayakrishnan in 2017, Pando helps businesses automate and optimize their supply chain, and connects them to logistics vendors and aggregators. The company’s clients include Britannia, Marico, Philips, and Tata.
Typically, Pando gets into multi-year commitments to manage a company’s entire freight network and gets paid on the basis of number of transactions and sales on the platform.
“We will continue to deepen our network offering in India while scaling in select strategic markets including Southeast Asia and Europe, investing in technology and talent, and enhancing our transaction capabilities by working closely with our vendor-partners,” Nitin Jayakrishnan, cofounder and CEO, Pando.
Pando last raised $2 million in 2018 led by Nexus Venture Partners.
For the fiscal year ended 2019, the company’s revenue stood at Rs 35 lakh on a loss of Rs 82 lakh, regulatory filings show.“We have grown 3-4x in the last year and will maintain the pace this year,” Jayakrishnan said.
“Global Logistics 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,” said TC Meenakshisundaram, Founder-MD, Chiratae Ventures.
Logistics is becoming a critical value differentiator for both B2B and B2C companies – and with a number of new digital players like freight aggregators, marketplaces, and fleet owners, today shippers are struggling to manage their complex networks and match customer channels including e-commerce, distributors, modern trade, with freight channels including spot, contract, fleet owner, aggregators.
“Pando helps reduce the number of touchpoints, decisions and overall costs in managing complex supply chains while maximizing service levels for every channel,” said Manohar, cofounder, and head of engineering at Pando.
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