Customers are increasingly looking for faster delivery options as e-commerce continues to grow. In Indonesia, the gross merchandise volume is expected to reach around US$97 billion by 2025, with the logistics of physical goods reaching US$5 billion in revenue, said RaRa Delivery.
RaRa is an Indonesian logistics startup that wants to make same-day delivery scalable. It announced today the closure of its seed funding round at S$1.2 million or more than US$830,000, led by 500 Startups. A syndicate of angel investors from Southeast Asia-focused Angel Central led by Der Shing Lim also participated in the round.
The company said it would use the new funds to acquire talent in business development, operations, and technology to further expand in Indonesia, Karan Bhardwaj, founder and CEO of RaRa, said.
Founded in 2017, RaRa provides last-mile logistics services for e-commerce businesses across Greater Jakarta by leveraging its asset-light model and real-time optimization technology.
RaRa’s algorithms can create routes for “thousands of orders in a matter of seconds” by doing capacity optimization that factors in weight, dimensions, parcel type, and distance based on sub-districts and route optimization based on real-time traffic data, Bhardwaj told Tech in Asia.
Other service providers trying to do same-day deliveries do so through point-to-point deliveries, which lack consolidation and optimization and charge as much as US$3.50 for a distance of 25 kilometres, said Bhardwaj. “The price is not sustainable for e-commerce businesses, merchants, or sellers,” he said.
RaRa charges a flat rate regardless of distance. “We want to find the perfect balance between customer service and cost,” Bhardwaj said.
Aside from its algorithms, the startup also offers integration of its open application programming interfaces.
RaRa said it currently does deliveries for the likes of Lazada, Shopee, and Bukalapak, among others.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Bhardwaj admits that his company has also been affected. However, RaRa continues to deliver groceries and other essentials for partners like Mitra Bukalapak and Gorry Gourmet. It is also looking to partner with more businesses that require urgent deliveries for essentials, Bhardwaj said.
Last year, the startup secured angel funding from GK-Plug and Play Indonesia, Zopim co-founders Royston Tay and Yang Bin Kwok, Stripe’s Vidit Agarwal, as well as Unilever exec Vishal Gupta.
This article was written by Doris Yu, a Tech in Asia Writer - a finance and technology writer based in Hong Kong and edited by Charmaine de Lazo.
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