Zoom, an on-demand delivery specialist announced on January 15, 2018 that it has received RM4 million (US$1 million) in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Gobi Partners. Other investors in the round include: Cana Asia Limited, Spiral Ventures Pte Ltd, and Cradle Fund Sdn. Bhd.
Founded in 2016 by Jeevan Kumar, Mohamad Hafiz and Sean Lee, Zoom provides a platform via web and mobile app, for startups and small businesses to solve their last-mile delivery issues through professional riders and a sophisticated system that integrates deeply into their clients’ business ecosystems.
There are currently 11 people on Zoom’s management team, 80+ riders (“Zoomers”) and over 300 registered freelancers. At present, the startup has over 200 registered users on its platform, and 80% are active partners that queue for delivery on a daily basis. The company recently won the “Startup of the Year” award at the ASEAN Rice Bowl Startup Awards.
Zoom plans to use the new funds to activate Penang & Johor Bahru while strengthening its offers across the Klang Valley, and in the coming year, expands its operations to Thailand and Indonesia. The platform will also strive for deeper integration with various e-commerce platforms and start white-labelling the interface for corporate clients that want to manage their logistics internally, but use Zoom’s system for the automation of grouping and assigning deliveries.
“Zoom was created to help SME businesses with their logistics,” said Jeevan. “Traditional delivery agents are just not conditioned to do on-demand deliveries for them; they don’t have the effective mechanisms. Therefore, it becomes difficult and expensive for startups to use the current delivery options available in the market, due to their usually small basket sizes and scale issues.”
“And that is where we come in,” added Sean. “By providing an in-house tech platform that connects partners, Zoom HQ and Zoomers. Partners get a logistics enabler system that manages orders; we at Zoom HQ have a Control Panel system that monitors and tracks all orders; and our Zoomers have a mobile app that receives tasks that have to be completed.”
Their lead investor, Gobi Partners, is no stranger to delivery services in Southeast Asia, in particular China, having invested into Hong Kong’s first unicorn GoGoVan via the Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund and ASEAN’s Deliveree, that has operations in Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand.
Speaking on the investment, Managing Partner Kay-Mok Ku said, “The traditional delivery space is ripe for disruption as consumers continue to shift to on-demand services, which require the use of technology that can optimize deliveries in real-time. Zoom’s platform is precisely the solution that enables these providers to scale and it is one of the key reasons they won the Startup of the Year Award.”
The size of the SEA e-commerce market is expected to grow to $13 billion in the coming year. Businesses are also seeing a sharp increase in the need for on-demand delivery, but the market is currently under penetrated by traditional delivery companies due to the sophisticated customization of delivery mechanics that small businesses require. As such, by being the most cost-effective and professional demand delivery service in the market, Zoom is poised to become the delivery service provider for e-commerce merchants and SME companies in the region.