Lalamove, a Hong Kong-based on-demand delivery company, has completed its Series B financing round, raising US$30 million.
The Series B financing was led by Beijing-based Xianghe Capital, founded by Hesong Tang, with participation from Blackhole Capital and existing shareholders MindWorks Ventures, Crystal Stream and Thailand's Asia Plus Group Holdings.
The investment round exceeded its previous three rounds of financing, taking the startup's total funding to a combined $60 million. With the investment, Lalamove will continue to expand aggressively in Asia, where it plans to launch in a further 60 cities by the end of 2017. It already maintains the largest service area in Asia for intracity delivery, where its app connects users with more than 500,000 delivery drivers.
"Logistics is a big market -- worth $1.7 trillion in China -- and it accounts for up to 27% of GDP for some countries in Southeast Asia; it is underpenetrated by mobile internet," said Lalamove founder and chief executive Shing Chow.
"The evolution of the logistics industry has not been as rapid as some other markets like communication, but we believe we are at a tipping point where transformation will now happen very rapidly. We will see some amazing companies build this sector," he said.
Lalamove's fast growth was enhanced by key partnerships with the world's foremost tech companies, said Mr Chow.
In 2016, Lalamove partnered with Line, a world leading mobile platforms, to develop the Line Man app, which gives users the ability to quickly purchase and receive documents, packages, food and grocery items in Thailand. The company previously developed enterprise solutions for Google and Ikea.
"In our two years of operations in Bangkok, Lalamove has become the city's leading on-demand delivery app," said Chanon Klahan, Lalamove Thailand's managing director.
"This funding will not only enable us to expand to other cities, but also to offer additional services to meet the needs of our users and to further develop and upgrade the app with new features," he said.
"Lalamove is a textbook example of how the internet helped to improve a traditional industry," said Mr Tang of Xianghe Capital.
Kongkiat Opaswongkarn, chief executive of Asia Plus Group Holdings, said this round of funding is expected to push Lalamove to reach the next level of growth.