China trucking fleet platform Duckbill raises $49m

CICC is investing via the Suzhou CICC SAIC Emerging Industry Equity Investment Fund, which was set up last year with the private equity arm of SAIC Motor. Existing investors Future Capital, Shunwei Capital and Furong Capital re-upped.

Duckbill has raised USD 200m across six funding rounds since its inception in 2017, according to a statement. This includes a USD 50m Series B in March last year from Furong, Future, Shunwei, Temasek Holdings, Zhuopu Capital, and Unicorn Capital Partners. Future and Shunwei co-led a USD 30m pre-Series B in 2020.

The company uses algorithm-empowered software and management systems to bring digitalised dispatching and transport services to container truckers. Its platform is said to represent an upgrade of the entire container transportation value chain.

Duckbill claimed to have around 2,100 trucks and about 13,000 partnered vehicles in its ecosystem as of the end of 2021. The volume of orders topped 1.1m TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) containers in 2021, representing a 54x increase on 2017.

The company claims to serve more than 9,000 companies, including logistics giant Sinotrans, China Merchants Group-backed Sinotrans, state-owned Cosco Shipping, home appliance supplier Midea and Alibaba Group's logistics arm Cainiao. There are plans to build a fleet of more than 10,000 trucks globally by 2025.

The fresh capital will support technology R&D and an expansion in Lianyungang, Nantong, Qinzhou, and Haikou. Operations currently span Shanghai, Ningbo, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Guangzhou and Tianjin, all of which were among the world's 10 busiest ports in terms of container throughputs in 2021.

Lighthouse Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor of Duckbill.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• China
• Transportation
• Logistics
• CICC
• Future Capital
• Shunwei Capital Partners