Logistics startup Pando raises $2M seed funding led by Nexus Venture Partners

Pando, the company that digitises logistics for Fortune 500 companies has raised $2 million seed funding led by Nexus Venture Partners. The round also saw participation from Kashyap Deorah - Founder Hypertrack, Girish Mathrubootham - Founder and CEO Freshdesk, Nishant Rao - Sirion Labs and P Balaji -Vodafone. 

Pando, a digital player in the logistics sector raised $2 million in seed funding on Monday. The round was led by by Nexus Venture partners. Other marque investors and entrepreneurs from the startup ecosystem also participated in this round.

The fund raise will primarily be used to further develop the product and make it more comprehensive, feature-rich and be a more practical solution for logistics management focussed on large enterprises. The funding will also aid in hiring better talent. 

Pando has some of the largest enterprises and transporters in India as users. The primary focus has been on high volume industries like - FMCG, White Goods, and Paper.

“We currently do about 10 lakh transactions per annum, at an average value of of Rs 2500 per transaction,” says Nitin Jayakrishnan, Founder and CEO, Pando. The company was built on a simple observation that while as business logistics is networked, the systems, which manage it are not as well networked.

Nitin adds that this investment is a shot in the arm for the team to continue to reimagine logistics — from being a heavy, cumbersome cost-centre, to being a robust, digital foundation to any business. 

“We have seen encouraging adoption from Fortune 500s and global blue-chips. We will continue to focus on product and people, to ease and enable commerce through digital deliveries,” says Nitin. 

The Pando Enterprise suite is built to help enterprises of all sizes digitise, monitor, and optimise supply-chain operations. The product is built in a way to be intelligent, predictive and scalable thus helping companies control fragmented, multi-tiered logistics ecosystems from a single screen. 

“While there has been a lot of digitisation and investments in the supply (transporter) side of the ecosystem in the recent past, Pando solves a key problem of convergence, on the demand (shipper or enterprise) side of the ecosystem, which is a large, global white-space,” says Nitin. 

The team observes that in India alone, outsourced logistics rakes up $200 billion every year. Globally, this number is close to $10 trillion.  

Sandeep Singhal, Co-founder & Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners, said in press release, that Pando is enabling enterprises to turn its supply chain management function from a cost-centre to a source of competitive differentiation by providing real time visibility and seamless digital links across the value chain. 

“This kind of faith from large marquee enterprise clients shows the team’s domain understanding, and focus on customer success, and convinced us to partner with them in bringing about this transformation not just with Indian clients but also in global markets,” he says. 

Pando’s team comes with deep experience in building and scaling products, and includes entrepreneurs, designers, and engineers who have built great products, and led global teams at Sandisk, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, Think Design, Honeywell, Ernst & Young, Freshworks, Airbnb, Shadowfax, and other companies.

“With new-age companies using logistics to differentiate themselves, incumbent executives are looking to logistics as a strategic priority. Logistics is no longer viewed as a necessary-evil, but an opportunity to drive customer acquisition, retention and value. The digitisation that Pando enables is at the foundation of this transformation,” says Kashyap Deorah, Investor in Pando, and Founder of HyperTrack, a movement-tracking-as-a-service company.