Loship earns $12 million to expand its B2B delivery service for small businesses and restaurants in Vietnam
Loship, a Vietnam-based one-hour e-commerce delivery business, said today that it has raised US$12 million in a pre-Series C round of equity financing led by BAce Capital, a VC firm supported by Ant Group, and Sun Hung Kai & Co., a Hong Kong-listed alternative investment company.
MetaPlanet Holdings (an Estonian VC company funded by Skype co-founders), Wealth Well (Saudi Arabia), Prism Ventures (Singapore), and SQ Capital Group are among the co-investors (Hong Kong).
Mojtaba Akhbari (former Vice President of Starbucks), Tim Neville (CEO, APAC at FNZ Group), Ben Fitzpatrick (Director, Global Macro Sales at BNP Paribas), Wayne Cowden (founder and CEO of DASS-Inc.), Simon Eglise (MD at EC1 Partners), Quentin Flannery (Director of Ilwella), Jonathon Feil (Director of Prenzler Group), and Milan Reinartz were (CEO at iVS).
The financing follows Loship’s secret bridge funding round, which was led by MetaPlanet in February 2021.
The current amount of funding will be used by Loship to increase its footprint in major areas, expand into new locations, and drive its newest growth area: B2B delivery for small F&B enterprises and mom-and-pop stores.
“We have a very clear path to profitability as well as strategic plans on how to get there. Next on our agenda is to bring Loship services to customers living in all parts of Vietnam, especially the lower-tier markets. We will also use the funding to drive forward instant commerce delivery in under an hour,” said co-founder and CEO Trung Hoang Nguyen.
Benny Chen, the founder of BAce Capital, has joined Loship’s Board of Directors as part of the acquisition. With significant expertise in food delivery and financial companies throughout China, India, and Southeast Asia, he served on the boards of Zomato and Paytm.
Loship is a distribution network that was founded in 2017 to meet the growing demand for quick delivery. Food delivery (Loship), grocery delivery (Lomart), ride-hailing (Loxe), medicine delivery (Lomed), laundry service (Lozat), parcel delivery (Lo-send), flower delivery (Lohoa), beauty goods delivery (LoBeauty), and B2B supply delivery (LoBeauty) are among the services it offers (Losupply).
Loship now employs more than 70,000 drivers and 200,000 merchants. It has a client base of over two million people in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Can Tho, and Bien Hoa.
“Loship creates a strong ecosystem which adds value to small business, customers as well as riders. Under Trung’s entrepreneurship and leadership, we saw the company get much stronger during the pandemic by constantly bringing product and service innovation to its merchants and users. We strongly believe in local entrepreneurs to understand the market and people’s needs better in a great potential market like Vietnam,” said Chen.
“We believe that Vietnam possesses great long-term potential as a market, and we are keen to support entrepreneurs like Trung and his team to build innovative businesses that thoughtfully address local needs,” added Lincoln Yeh, co-Head (Private Equity) at Sun Hung Kai.
Smilegate Investment, Hana Financial Group, and Golden Gate Ventures, all from South Korea, have previously invested in Loship’s Series A and B rounds. Prior to that, in October 2020, it received bridge investment from Vulpes Investment in a Vulpes-led bridge round.
