RaRa Delivery, a startup providing instant delivery service for e-commerce in Indonesia, has secured US$3.25 million in funding co-led by Sequoia India’s Surge and East Ventures.
The startup was founded in Singapore in July 2019 by Karan Bhardwaj, a graduate of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. It is a last-mile logistics company aiming to “revolutionise one to three-hour deliveries” for e-commerce through its data-driven approach and proprietary technology.
While other companies with express logistics infrastructure focus on one-to-one deliveries, RaRa Delivery has developed real-time batching technology to do ‘many-to-many’ deliveries within a few hours.
As a result, it has been able to bring down the eventual delivery cost for customers while enabling drivers to earn more money in fewer hours. According to the firm, it has been able to carry out three-hour deliveries for up to 20 per cent lesser cost due to the efficiencies of batching technology.
Also Read: RaRa Delivery raises over US$800K funding
Besides quick deliveries, RaRa Delivery’s platform offers real-time notifications and status updates. In addition, customers can chat with service agents and drivers, all through a single chat platform.
The firm has also integrated its services into all major online marketplaces in Southeast Asia to allow any seller to offer instant and same-day deliveries to their customers.
In the back-end, RaRa receives orders from businesses and merchants via API integrations, calculates capacity, timeslots, distance and route optimisation to slot these orders into batches and maximise productivity to reduce the cost per order.
RaRa Delivery has ramped up its offering given the rising demand for instant groceries and medical supply delivery services in response to the global pandemic. In addition, it has provided essential one to three-hour delivery windows required for food and medical supplies during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
The startup counts grocery players such as Sayurbox, Blibli, Kopi Kenangan, Grab Merchant, and Alodokter.
“While the express delivery space has been flourishing in sectors such as groceries and healthcare, we saw an opportunity to scale this offering across all categories, as customer expectations grow alongside the maturity of e-commerce in Indonesia,” said founder and CEO Karan Bhardwaj.
In Indonesia, consumer appetite for fast convenience has risen, and consumers are willing to pay a premium for quick deliveries. As a result, the market size for same-day delivery is expected to grow to 30 per cent, totalling 4.5 million parcels a day by 2023. The premium logistics charges for same-day delivery services are projected to increase to IDR 65 trillion (US$4.5 billion) in 2023, up from IDR 4.4 trillion (US$556 million) in 2018, thereby outpacing the growth in other delivery services1.
A part of Surge’s fifth cohort of 23 companies, RaRa also counts Royston Tay and Yang Bin Kwok among its investors. In April 2020, RaRa Delivery secured US$834,000 in a seed funding round, led by 500 Startups.
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Image Credit: RaRa Delivery
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