US, UK VCs invest Pakistan logistics start-up Trukkr
US-based Accion Venture Lab and Sturgeon Capital of the UK have led a USD 6.4m seed round for Pakistan’s Trukkr, a financial technology provider for the trucking industry.
Haitou Global, Al Zayani Venture Capital, and Peter Findley, a general partner at US-based Anchorless Bangladesh, also participated.
Trukkr’s platform allows users to manage their logistics supply chain and provides financial products to small and medium-sized carriers. It describes the opportunity as a USD 35bn market that is severely underserved in terms of financial services.
Less than 5% of trucking companies using Trukkr have access to financial services and must wait up to 90 days for payment for services rendered. The start-up has added more than 20,000 trucking companies to its platform in the past 12 months.
“Trukkr’s solution to this challenge is unique, powerful, and scalable. Through its software solutions, Trukkr is deeply embedded and integrated into the workflows of both the corporates and the truckers, providing Trukkr with high-quality data and a ready distribution channel for working capital and other lending products,” Robin Butler, a partner and head of impact at Sturgeon, said in a statement.
The investment represents a minor resuscitation of Pakistan’s start-up scene, which boomed during the pandemic but has gone silent since last July when its poster child, Airlift Technologies, closed operations amidst reports of accounting irregularities.
Airlift, a last-mile delivery app, raised a USD 85m Series B round in August 2021 that was said to be the largest-ever start-up investment in the country. This followed a USD 12m round in 2019 that was, at the time, called the country’s largest Series A yet.
Airlift cited pandemic-related pressures on its business in a statement confirming it was closing its operations less than a year after what was perceived as an ecosystem-creating investment. However, allegations of mismanagement and poor oversight quickly surfaced.
VC investment in Pakistan averaged USD 28.4m a year between 2015 and 2020, according to AVCJ Research, before jumping to USD 193.3m in 2021 and USD 232.4m in 2022. AVCJ has records for only one deal prior to Trukkr this year: a USD 1.2m round last month for e-commerce start-up Swag Kicks that featured a mix of local and regional investors.
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