B2B hyperlocal delivery startup Opinio announced that it has raised $7 million in its Series A funding from logistics company Delhivery, Sands Capital, and Accel Partners. The investments will be used for expansion in multiple cities while strengthening their technology platform and their product portfolio.
This is not the first funding for the venture. Prior to this, Opinio had managed to raise USD 1.3 million from Accel Partners and Tracxn Labs within seven weeks of starting operations in July this year.
Opinio helps small businesses – including restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries and laundry stores – to fulfill their demand by offering delivery as a service. As of last month, the startup was in collaboration with 500 merchants having 700 pilots in 15 areas of Bengaluru and three areas of Delhi. Today, the startup claims to witness a 30 per cent week on week growth.
With the recent rounds of funding, the firm plans to hire 200 more people in its core team in the next six months. Speaking more on the utilisation of investments and technology, Lokesh Jangid, CTO and Co-Founder at Opinio says
”Hyperlocal logistics is a problem which can efficiently and profitably be solved by leveraging technology. The product team at Opinio is continuously innovating and working on multiple problems related to payments, optimisation, merchant behaviour, etc., with cutting edge technology.”
Commenting on the latest round of funding Abhinav Chaturvedi, Vice President at Accel Partners said
“We see same day delivery becoming the norm going forward. Opinio is building a strategic asset in a large market by optimising the last mile fixed cost.”
capital over the past 10 months. If one follows, Assocham-PwC report, about 40 million consumers purchased goods online in 2014 and the number is expected to grow to 65 million this year.
Narrowing down, there is a mad rush by VC investments rushing in this space, with almost over 38 million been invested in the on demand logistics delivery space, according to YS Research. These investments are also going to companies likeLogiNext who are leveraging big data to generate insights for companies to predict delays, save cost, and provide reliable customer service.
RoadRunnr snapped the biggest share of the pie – $11 million funding in July – for developing their fleet. The differentiation for Opinio is that one can track the pilots while they deliver. With Amazon and Ola already running projects in Bengaluru, through Amazon Kirana and Ola Store, Ola’s hyperlocal grocery mobile app, the heat definitely seems to be on.
Will ample funding and competitors jumping into the space, it will be interesting to see what will the players do next to have an edge over the other.
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