This PH-Based Startup Just Raised P240 Million in Seed Round Funding
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Logistics and supply chain management integrator Locad announced that it has raised $4.9 million in a seed funding round on Monday, July 5. The funding was led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge with participation from Antler, Febe Ventures, Foxmont, GFC, the Gokongwei Family, and Hustle Fund, as well as several angel investors from the regional ecommerce, tech and logistics ecosystem.
This is the first Philippine Surge Investment of Sequoia, an American venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California, and one of the largest seed round fundings this year for a company based in Manila.
According to co-founder and CEO Constantin Robertz, the funding will be used to enhance the startup’s tech platform, build up fulfillment capacities, add more warehouses, and expand the network to more cities across the Philippines and Southeast Asia.
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Launched in October 2020, Locad is a third-party logistics startup that can “orchestrate the supply chain, from warehouse to delivery, for ecommerce businesses, whether large companies or MSMEs.
While based in Manila, the company now has hubs in Singapore and Bangalore, India. It also has warehouse facilities in at least five cities across the Philippines: Taguig, Parañaque, Laguna, Cebu, and Davao.
Just six months since launch, Locad is already fulfilling orders for a host of different companies, including big familiar ones like Landmark, Payless, Mango, Toshiba, Terranova, Marithé Francois Girbaud, Mossimo, Vans, as well as smaller ecommerce companies based elsewhere in the country.
“Ecommerce and on-demand delivery services are accelerating in the Philippines,” Robertz, who is perhaps best known within local startup circles for his work with Zalora during the company’s early years, said. “Many vendors, producers, and sellers are migrating to digital services but are still hampered in delivering their products to their customers. They also lack infrastructure, resources, and experience in managing both online services and their own supply chain.”
Robertz outlined some of the challenges currently faced by ecommerce logistics firms, including long delivery periods and delays in shipping, the inability to deliver to far locations and expensive shipping costs, and the lack of storage space and irreconcilable inventory levels.
Locad seeks to address these challenges through its suite of solutions that essentially simplifies ecommerce logistics: a distributed and flexible warehousing network, an all-in one platform to manage multiple stores and inventory pools, and seamless automated order fulfillment.
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