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The deal brings the company’s total funding to US$30 million in an industry full of regional and local competition

Lalamove, a Hong Kong-based logistics company formerly known as EasyVan, announced today it has raised a US$10 million round of funding led by MindWorks Ventures, a previous investor based in Hong Kong and London.

All but one of the participating investors were shareholders in previous rounds — Crystal Steam from China, Taiwan’s AppWorks and Aria Group from Hong Kong. The new investor for the latest financing was Asia Plus out of Thailand.

The latest funding round brings the total amount raised by LaLamove in the last 18 months to US$30 million. The previous two rounds were also of the US$10 million amount and were announced in January and September of 2015.

“This funding will be used to accelerate our leadership position and expansion efforts throughout China and other SEA countries,” said Founder and CEO Shing Chow in an official statement.

“It is our goal to be profitable this year, and it’s quite rare that you see a startup growing at our speed achieving that in less than three years. We are on track to deliver that,” he said.

Also Read: TOP100 Startup Search: Lalamove moves to first place in Hong Kong

Lalamove is an on-demand delivery platform which targets businesses and Chow says it leverages the mobile internet to make inter-city delivery more convenient.

Much like other on-demand logistics platforms, a business owner who, for example, needs to transport the company’s fabric to the dress shop across town, will make a request via Lalamove. The sender will choose the type of vehicle required (ranging from vans to lorries to motorbikes) and the delivery person will arrive at the location, load the goods and drive off to the destination.

Lalamove claims an average delivery time of four to six minutes and operates in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Taipei and 15 cities in China.

However, the logistics industry is a competitive vertical in the startup world with multiple players trying to snag a piece of the pie.

The most direct competitor for Lalamove is another Hong Kong logistics company named GogoVan. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised US$26.5 million to date with its most recent round being an undisclosed amount from Alibaba announced on May 11. Gogovan is a larger company, claiming 150,000 drivers as compared with 50,000 for Lalamove.

In the region, companies like Uber, Grab and Go-jek have all dipped their toes into the delivery vertical.

Lalamove was Founded in 2013 with the goal of serving SMEs and has since grown to offer enterprise solutions for companies like IKEA, LINE and Google.

The partnership with LINE is both new (the company went public with the arrangement about two weeks ago) and interesting. In Bangkok, LINE users will be able to order food via a restaurant database Wongnai. LINE explicitly stated the goal is to move beyond ‘simply being a chat app’.

Called LINE Man, the cooperation puts Lalamove directly in the food delivery vertical to compete with foodpanda (Deliveroo does not operate in Thailand). Furthermore, the service offers grocery and parcel delivery options.

“We began as a small startup in Hong Kong working out of my apartment and have grown to 19 cities across Asia in the last two years. When we began, we targeted lots of small businesses, but since then we have developed enterprise solutions to allow companies like Google, IKEA, and now LINE to make their delivery much faster and simpler,” said Chow.

Also Read: Snap, crop, buy: Hong Kong’s fashion discovery startup Goxip raises US$1.62M seed round

MindWorks is a VC firm focussed on the Greater China region and Southeast Asia. In February 2016, the company participated in a US$3.5 million funding round for the Hong Kong-based online clothing retailer Grana.

Lalamove won e27‘s  Echelon Top100 regional qualifier round in Hong Kong in March 2016.

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Lalamove will be battling it out against 15 other winners for the grand prize at Echelon Asia Summit this June 15-16 at Singapore EXPO.

Join us as we connect you to the tech pioneers of tomorrow! Secure your tickets now, with an exclusive 20% discount with promo code SUMMIT20.

Photo courtesy of Lalamove

The post La La Logistics: Hong Kong’s Lalamove raises US$10 million, eyes expansion appeared first on e27.

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