March 23, 2018
Singapore-based Insignia Ventures Partners, founded by former Sequoia Capital venture partner Yinglan Tan, has invested $600,000 in Vietnamese freight-with-trucker connecting platform LOGIVAN.
Linh Pham, Founder of LOGIVAN confirmed the investment with DEALSTREETASIA in an interaction. She told the portal that the newly-raised capital will enable it to expand to Ho Chi Minh City and other major economic hubs in Vietnam, serving companies that have high transportation needs.
After noticing that 70 per cent trucks in Vietnam returned empty due to a fragmented logistics market, Pham founded LOGIVAN as a connecting platform for trucks, becoming the first company in Vietnam working to ‘Uberize’ the trucking industry with technology.
LOGIVAN offers a central platform that tracks the location of freight and truck. In doing so, it is able to optimize truck routes and reduce their empty load return rates.
In order to book a truck, clients access LOGIVAN’s marketplace on the web and indicate how many trucks they require and what kind of cargo they need to be delivered.
Pham, a former Goldman Sachs technology analyst and Cambridge University graduate, earlier founded Snappetite, a platform for deals before launching LOGIVAN.
According to the World Bank’s ranking, Vietnam is 64th out of 160 countries in the world and 4th in ASEAN after Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand in logistics development.
Vietnam’s logistics costs remain high, equivalent to over 20 per cent of GDP while these costs account for between 9 per cent and 14 per cent of GDP in developed countries, according to Vietnam Logistics Association.
The six-month-old startup LOis considered Uberise’ Vietnam’s road freight market. It works with 300 trucks and ships up to 28,800 tons of freight per year.
Insignia Ventures Partners is a venture capital firm specializing in startup investments. The firm prefers to invest in technology sector in Southeast Asia. Insignia Ventures Partners is based in Singapore. In February, it has closed its maiden fund at $120 million.
The milestone comes less than a year after Tan left Sequoia’s office in Singapore, and also marks the largest ever maiden vehicle by a venture capital firm in this region.
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