EV Growth leads $14.5m round for Indonesian logistics player

Jungle Ventures also participated in the round. It follows a seed round of undisclosed size early last year and a $1.6 million pre-Series A in October, both backed by East Ventures. EV Growth is a joint venture between East, Indonesia's Sinar Mas Digital Ventures and Japan's YJ Capital that closed its debut fund at $200 million in May.

Waresix aims to provide end-to-end business support in transportation and warehousing by networking logistics operators via an online platform and data analytics service that is said to improve transparency, quality of service and income for asset owners. It claims to have 20,000 trucks and 200 warehouses in Indonesia on its platform.

The company will use the fresh capital to expand its digital coverage to more second-tier cities with a view to helping reduce inflated logistics expenses for small and medium-sized enterprises. It estimates the size of the domestic freight sector at $240 billion and expects to benefit from a supportive macro context, including government plans to advance extensive road and rail projects.

The investment comes less than a week after an $8.5 million Series A for Ritase, a similar business focused on the local trucking industry with some 7,000 trucks on its platform. In April, another local logistics player Sicepat Ekspres raised a $50 million Series A for an end-to-end model that connects online merchants warehousing, couriers, and air and cargo delivery partners.

Willson Cuaca, a managing partner at East, noted that logistics costs in Indonesia represent 24% of the country's GDP and that 74% of these costs are spent on transportation. "Put simply, the more efficient our logistics are, the more competitive our products become," he said in a statement. "This is only one of the simplest examples of how logistics affect the nation's economy."

Improved logistics and infrastructure services are seen as critical prerequisites for meeting Indonesia's natural scaling challenges, in new-economy and traditional industries alike. Ambitious government plans such as a $416 billion infrastructure construction agenda for the 2015-2019 period will require private and foreign capital, but progress has been slowed by ongoing concerns around risk alignment and regulatory consistency.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Support services
• Early-stage
• Indonesia
• East Ventures
• Sinar Mas Digital Ventures
• YJ Capital
• Jungle Ventures
• Logistics
• TMT