BlackBuck joins unicorn club after raising $67M

BlackBuck, an online trucking startup, has raised $67 million in a Series E funding round. With this funding, its valuation has risen to more than $1 billion. It is also the 16th Indian startup to join the unicorn club in 2021, following BrowserStack's $200 million raise, which valued it at $4 billion.

Tribe Capital, IFC Emerging Asia Fund, and VEF led the round. The round was also attended by existing investors Wellington Management, Sands Capital, and International Finance Corporation.

The proceeds of this fund will be used to expand its market penetration and launch new service offerings for its trucking partners. The company will also make significant investments in product and data science capabilities to enable more efficient freight matching for the Indian trucking ecosystem.

According to Rajesh Yabaji, co-founder and CEO of BlackBuck, the company plans to expand into financial services and assist its trucking partners with insurance and other working capital requirements.

“BlackBuck started with a dream to re-imagine trucking, to make it simpler and more efficient. It has been six years and we are just getting started to make a difference. We continue to dedicate ourselves for the foreseeable future to solve fundamental Indian trucking problems. The new financing round gives us more firepower to invest in fundamentally hard trucking problems and continue deepening our reach and impact," he added.

Blackbuck provides intercity logistics services to large corporations as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across all major product categories such as minerals, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), and many others.

According to Saadia Khairi, Fund Head of the IFC Emerging Asia Fund said,  “At the IFC Emerging Asia Fund, we are excited to partner with BlackBuck in its next phase of growth. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, BlackBuck has scaled its online freight marketplace and fleet management services rapidly. BlackBuck’s contribution to increased transparency and efficiency in the large, fragmented, and predominantly unorganized long-haul freight market in India offers the potential for significant developmental impact.”

The platform is based on a network of over 700,000 truckers who operate 1.2 million trucks across India. It digitizes truckers' fleet operations and operates a marketplace to help match trucks with relevant loads.

Furthermore, it receives more than $15 million in monthly transactions. It operates across 700+ districts and 1,000+ industrial hubs in India, with over 1.2 million trucks on its platform, enabling smooth and efficient trucking operations. Currently, the company has over 10,000 customers, which include SMEs as well as large corporations.

Hindustan Unilever, Reliance, Coca-Cola, Asian Paints, Tata, Vedanta, L&T, and Jindal are among the well-known companies.

Arjun Sethi, co-founder, and partner at Tribe Capital commented on the development, "India's supply chain and logistics industry is moving from paper and pencil to digital. BlackBuck’s ability to measure output and productivity growth has streamlined logistical challenges for the industry over a short time frame. Its continued high-velocity growth promises to bring even greater transformation to the Indian trucking ecosystem."

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