Southeast Asia’s logistics is fairly scattered with the top firms differing from country to country and that’s where a startup called Ninja Van hopes to make a difference. The Singapore-based company today announced $30m Series B round aimed at building it into the go-to partner for anyone selling online in Southeast Asia.
Two-year-old Ninja Van is essentially a plug-and-play logistics partner that gives e-commerce companies reach to customers across Southeast Asia. That might sound simplistic — the company does say it is “powered by proprietary cloud-based technology” — but the idea is to make the challenging issue of logistics partnerships in Southeast Asia simple.
To fill this gap, this Series B round — led by the Abraaj Group with existing investor Monk’s Hill Ventures and new backers B Capital Group and YJ Capital (Yahoo Japan) — will fuel an expansion to cover Southeast Asia’s core markets. (Ninja Van raised a $2.5m Series A round last year.)
The company is presently in four countries — Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam — and it intends to add Thailand and the Philippines to that list before August. Rather than simply being in countries, Ninja Van CEO Chang Wen Lai said he wants to spread its logistics roots beyond the biggest cities to tap into tier-two and -three locations.