Y Combinator logistics startup Rider has raised $3.1million from YC Demo Day as it pursues to upgrade the logistics space in Pakistan and create next day delivery service just like Amazon.
Apart from YC, investors including i2i Ventures, Flexport, Soma Capital and Rebel Fund also joined in the financing round. Global founders Capital, Fatima Gobi Ventures and TPL e-Ventures which are the existing investors also joined the round which included well-known Dropbox co-founder, Arash Ferdowsi. The valuation has not been disclosed as yet.
Rider was funded in 2019 which has raised a total of $5.4 million since September 2021, including this latest seed round where it has collected $3.1 million. Kalsoom Lakhani, co-founder and general partner of i2i-Ventures, on joining the second round said that as the e-commerce industry in Pakistan is grows, so will the for a next-generation 3PLplayer that understand the Pakistani market realities, and knows how to build both aggressively ad also efficiently. We believe that this player is Rider.
Rider founder and CEO Salman Allana told that his inspiration to start this set-up was Amazon. He told that he got so much impressed with amazon deliveries during his stay at London for his MBA that how could an order placed ta midnight could be delivered to the doorstep by next morning. He said that he wanted to erase parcel anxiety from Pakistani market for all online buyers, including his own self that’s why he wants to bring this clear and large opportunity to Pakistan. He said that he wanted to address and sort out the possibility which occurred frequently in past when you placed order, there were high chances that the order will not arrive at all.
“A challenge for the market was that up to one in five orders never reach the customer’s doorstep resulting in $1 billion GMV lost annually from the market. The challenge for online buyers was a black box experience that led to minimal repeat online buyers,” said Allana. He further added that for online sellers specially for the 1 million SME Instagram and Facebook sellers who depend on online sale to boost business growth, cash on deliver, reconciliation and slow payback to online sellers is a challenge which create large working capital challenges. He said that he felt it a challenge and thought that the investors would be hesitant to invest as it would be slow and costly but still he decided to start Rider because the traditional delivery services were not equipped and trained enough to service online retail trend. With COVI19 the online buying market expanded which he took as an opportunity for built-for-purpose, dynamic, growth-focused start up.
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Rider operates 16 hubs which cover 60 delivery cities across the country. Rider plans to increase the network of delivery centers within each city rather than expanding to other cities which will improve overall lead times. To help grow the online business with new cash rolling in, Rider is planning to work on e-commerce tools such as payment wallets, plug-inns etc. It plans to facilitate bringing the next 1 million people online.
