Blackbuck is an online freight services aggregator started by Rajesh Yabaji, Chanakya Hridaya and Rama Subramaniam B. It was started in the month of January this year by Rajesh and Chanakya both IIT Kharagpur pass out and former employees at tobacco firm ITC. Rama an Ex-Director at Miebach Consulting joined them later on.
The firm act as a marketplace of truck owners and merchants. It’s an online platform that executes the transaction using intelligent auction engines equipped with smart mobile interfaces.
There is a surge in the demand for transportation of goods between businesses and consumers. India has witnessed more than several number of startups from the logistics sector in this past couple of years. With large VC firms such as Saif Partners, Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital placing their bets on this sector we feel the startup firms like Blackbuck are here for a longer run beyond any reasonable doubt.
Rajesh feels that the transportation is the largest unorganised sector globally. In India, the freight industry is estimated at $100 billion and contributes to 6 per cent of the GDP. And according to Rajesh, a bulk of this is inter-city logistics. The commerce of this industry is unorganised, fragmented and conducted offline. And he is certain that BlackBuck which is a holding company of Zinka Logistics will re-create logistics commerce with technology at its core.
This Bangalore-based B2B logistics startup in India recently raised Rs.165 Crore in a Series B round led by Tiger Global, Apoletto, DST Global-Yuri Milner’s Founders Fund with the participation from existing investors, Accel Partners and Flipkart.
The firm will be using the funds to use the money to speed up its expansion, build technology products and increase teams. At present Blackbuck is a 200 member team and they are present in total 40 locations in the country. It plans to expand to 200 locations by next year.
At present, they handle logistics for clients including Asian Paints, Unilever, Britannia, Godrej, Marico, Jyothy Laboratories and EID Parry.
Binny Bansal, Co Founder of Flipkart and a business start up mentor states that their investment in Blackbuck is a continuation of their strategy of developing and integrating the logistics ecosystem. He also is quite certain that Blackbuck with its new tech capabilities will strengthen Flipkart’s supply chain & logistics.
The emergence of players likes Blackbuck, Delhivery, GoJavas, Ecom Express and many other on-demand logistics companies with the support of giants like Flipkart, Warburg Pincus and many more things are looking up for the logistics sector of our country.
