On June 2, 2021, Locus a logistics startup based in Bengaluru, announced that it raised USD 50 Million in a Series C funding round. This funding round was led by GIC, a Singapore based sovereign wealth fund.
This round saw the participation of many other popular investors too, and the list goes like, Tiger Global and Falcon Edge, who are its existing investors, other than them there were Qualcomm Ventures LLC, and angel investors like CEO of Pine Labs, Amrish Rau; CEO of CRED, Kunal Shah; founder of Sierra Atlantic, Raju Reddy and Deb Sengupta, former president, SAP South Asia.
The startup stated that the fundraised will be utilized in improving geographical reach and strengthen its research and development sector to extend the product line.
Locus had earlier raised USD 30 million in the previous funding rounds, which brings the startup to a valuation of USD 80 Million.
Words from investors –
Varsha Tagare, Sr. Director, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Managing Director at Qualcomm Ventures, said, “We’re excited to invest in Locus to enable logistics as a service and support their journey to become a global last-mile automation leader.”
About Locus –
Locus was founded and established by Nisith Rastogi in 2015, having its headquarters in Bengaluru. The startup uses proprietary algorithm and ML to provide a smart option of supply chain solutions to the customers.
It has clients across SouthEast Asia, North America, the Indian Subcontinent and Europe. It handles its offices in India, the UK, the US, Singapore, Vietnam, Germany and Indonesia.
Currently, Locus also focuses on expanding its footprint in the US, by hiring veterans like Micheal D. Parmett, Customer success and Walter Heil, Senior Vice president, Business to run the US business. Micheal D, Parmett worked in 3GTMS and Manhattan Associates and Heil was a part of BluJay and Project44.
Words from the CEO –
CEO Nishith Rastogi said, “Quality and patient capital allows us to focus on path-breaking R&D, helping us deliver exceptional long-term value to our customers, over incremental improvements. We will be recruiting more PhDs in our data science team and are looking to double our patents by 2022.”
“We are now looking to support our customers with a global footprint. Other than the geographies we are already present in, we are also investing heavily in Latin America and aggressively building our presence there. Given that we’ve been training our algorithms with data across sectors like e-commerce, FMCG [fast moving consumer goods], e-grocery, etc, we can potentially come up with forward-looking custom maps to serve certain client requirements,” added Rastogi
