SINGAPORE: Singapore’s Ninja Van has raised US$279 million from backers including France’s GeoPost SA and ride-hailing giant Grab Holdings Inc, scoring one of Southeast Asia’s largest startup investments since Covid-19 was declared a pandemic.
Globally, tech investment has sputtered since the outbreak spooked deal-makers, shuttered smaller outfits and forced cash-burning corporations from Oyo to Grab to rein in spending. Just 44 Silicon Valley startups won funding in March, down from 126 two months prior, according to law firm Fenwick & West LLP.
But for now, Ninja Van, which helps e-commerce clients deliver more than a million packages daily across six Southeast Asian countries, is benefiting from a spike in orders. Its latest fundraising surpassed a US$200 million target set about a year ago and lifted its total financing to about US$400 million, Lai said.
Lai, a 32-year-old former derivatives trader at Barclays Plc, founded Ninja Van in 2014 with two friends, aiming to use technology to make the logistics market more efficient. They picked the name Ninja Van to reflect the idea of working quietly to get things done. It now helps consumer brands from L’Oreal to Wing Tai Holdings Ltd’s G2000 label digitise their businesses and sell to consumers, diversifying its clients beyond e-commerce platforms.
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