Quifers snaps up Rs 2 crore funding led by Indian Angel Network
Mumbai-based Quifers, a tech driven logistic platform, has raised Rs 2 crore in a round of funding led by Indian Angel Network and Smile, a consumer Internet and media platform. Quifers will utilize the funding to enhance the technology platform, expand the business in other cities and hire talents to strengthen the core team.
Launched in April 2015 by Amit Mishra, Vaibhav Gupta, and Amit Bansal, the platform uses technology as an enabler to aggregate LCVs (Light Commercial Vehicles) in order to provide hassle-free and high-speed goods transfer service to people.
“We will be introducing a new line of products, including new services. In our expansion plan, Pune is the first city where we’ll introduce our services followed by more metros and tier-II cities. We will also expand our team size from 14 to 25 in the next six months. Having IAN & Smile as our investors has proved a beneficial deal for us as they provide a diversified expertise, which strengthens our mentorship network to a great extent. It has been a pretty enriching experience with IAN and Smile so far,” says Amit, Co-founder, Quifers. Vikas Agarwal and Vishal Khare have led this round of investment on behalf of IAN. Vikas Agarwal will be joining the Quifers board.
He adds that he is creating an eco-system that seeks to provide advantages not only to the consumers and small and large business players, but also to the drivers and small transporters. Through strong back-end and mobile technology, the platform offers standardised logistics services in an unorganized format. This not only drives the cost down by almost 25-30 percent but also leads to increased earnings for the commercial vehicle drivers. Quifers also provides reports and insights that further helps businesses to optimize their last mile supply chain. We serve variety of market segments that includes not only the industry biggies but also small retailers/SMEs and individual consumers.
Quifers provides services to numerous unorganized small retailers and is increasing their customer base by acquiring around 80-100 new customers every week. Sensing the demand, the platform is also planning to add more vehicles in its current fleet. It says that in the next few months they will increase the fleet size from 200 to 250. As a part of its future plans, they would be developing technology product that would provide entry into long-haul/inter-city/freight sector. Currently, Quifers’ revenue clocks at Rs 25 lakh per month which is going to increase to Rs 1 crore per month by the year end.
Vishal Khare, lead IAN investor commented on the investment and says, “We looked at Quifers as a potential disruptor in a high growth area of technology driven logistics services and which will eventually go on to build a highly scalable model using their platform and analytics mechanism.”
Competition
In the market logistics space, The Porter in Mumbai and Blowhorn and Shippr in Bengaluru are some of a few players. However, owing to the enormous size of the market, new entrants are continuously entering the segment and many more are expected in near future.
On the competition, Amit says that Quifers is focussing on technology and product customization to tap the market and this is how it’ll tackle the competition.
