Logistics platform Locus raises $2.75 million in Series A funding

Logistics management platform, Locus has raised $2.75 million in Series A funding led by Exfinity Venture Partners with participation from Blume Ventures, BeeNext and Rajesh Ranavat (MD, Fung Capital). Existing investors also participated in this round. The start-up received seed funding from growX, Bhupen Shah, Manish Singhal, Amit Ranjan and others mid last year. [caption id=“attachment_2773842” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Co-Founders Nishith Rastogi (left) and Geet Garg[/caption] Locus enables enterprises with technology to manage their deliveries, with features including, automated smart dispatches, tracking, and fleet visualization, proprietary geocoder and proprietary route deviation engine. The funding will be used to strengthen its technology offerings and expand the team. The platform helps local companies and enterprises in courier, e-commerce, food delivery, FMCG and other verticals to optimize their logistics. The start-up offers two capabilities to clients - to Build - using a cluster of APIs, to enable developers embed it into their apps, and track delivery using Locus’ platform, and to Customize, that large clients can brand for themselves. Balakrishnan V, Chairman, Exfinity Venture Partners and ex CFO of Infosys, has joined the Locus board. Commenting on the investment, he said, “The logistics industry in India is evolving rapidly and it is the interplay of infrastructure, technology and new types of service providers that will define whether the industry is able to help its customers reduce their logistics costs and provide effective services. This provides an opportunity to solve these problems in a fundamentally different way using algorithms with greater opportunity for optimization. The Locus solution is built by factoring real world fuzziness to support iffy networks, inaccurate addresses and hundreds of other exception scenarios. It can also club orders in real-time re-routing to maximize throughput”. Sanjay Nath, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Blume Ventures, said, “Last-mile delivery remains a vital pain point for e-commerce and logistics.". Urban Ladder has been one of the earliest users of Locus. Kaustubh Chakraborty, Vice President, Operations, Urban Ladder, says of the company’s experience: “Locus has a clear interface for easy adoption and usage and has helped improve our productivity by 25 percent in 3 months.” Locus provides solutions for on-demand businesses for dispatching, route optimization, real-time driver tracking, managing the on-field workforce, mobile messaging, ETAs, tracking and sms alerts for end-customers and predictive analytics. The company offers the entire logistics technology stack in the form of a PAAS (platform as a service). The start-up was founded mid last year by Nishith Rastogi (BITS Pilani alumnus) and Geet Garg (IIT Kharagpur alumnus).