Startup News: Porter raises Rs 35 crore from Sequoia, Kae, others

Porter, a Mumbai-based online logistics marketplace, has raised Rs 35 crore in a Series-A round of funding from Sequoia Capital, Kae Capital and other investors. Founded by IIT graduates Pranav Goel, Uttam Digga and Vikas Choudhary in August 2014, Porter had raised around $500,000 (a little over Rs 3 crore) from Kae in April 2015.

Besides Sequoia and Kae, Porter has partnered three strategic angel investors - Rajeev Chitrabhanu, chief executive and managing director of JM Financial Services, Anupam Mittal, founder of People Group, and Sandeep Tandon, co-founder of FreeCharge - who will strengthen Porter's operations and guide them in their next phase of growth, the company said in a release.

Porter, an aggregator of light trucks and allows businesses and consumers to hire trucks and tempos on-demand for their intra-city pickup and delivery needs, plans to use the fresh round of funds to facilitate geographical expansion, improve existing products and solutions and recruit talent. The company currently has 300 vehicles handling 10,000 transactions every month in Mumbai and National Capital Region, with plans to ramp up to six more cities in the next one year.

"According to industry estimates, the Indian logistics market is pegged at $150 billion, of which the last-mile connectivity accounts for 25 per cent. While most of this unorganised, we have begun to witness technology-aided disruption in the market. At Porter, our aim is to add value to the operators who work with us," said Digga, co-founder and chief operating officer of Porter.

Porter, which provides reporting and intelligence tools that allow businesses real-time monitoring of the vehicles they use, is also developing application programming interfaces (APIs) that would enable small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups to integrate this logistic system with the customers' internal processes.