GIZTIX Raises Series A Led by AddVentures, Aiming to be Southeast Asia’s Logistics Leader

Thursday 23 November 2017 09:50
GIZTIX, Thailand's leading logistics marketplace developer, has raised $1.65m in Series A funding from three major venture capital firms – AddVentures by SCG, Wavemaker and 500 Tuktuks.

The significant move is expected to revolu6onize the country's logis6cs industry towards digital era, aligning with the government's Thailand 4.0 ini6a6ve.

Mr. SiAsak Wongsomnuk, CEO and co-founder of GIZTIX, said that "we look for strategic VCs in series A round, who share the same value and believe in the our mission to become Southeast Asia's leading delivery service provider and AddVentures and Wavemaker are the right ones. They are not only financial investors, but also strategic partners, who can help us achieve rapid and robust growth." GIZTIX plans to generate up to 10 6mes of current revenue over the next two years and on board more than 4,000 logis6cs service providers to the platform. 80% of which will be Thai operators and the rest are those in neighboring countries.

The logis6cs aggregator mobile applica6on was launched by a group of industry veterans with the vision to provide a simple and convenient platform for businesses to book trucks and other logis6cs services, similar to the hotel or airplane booking platforms. It solves the pain points of businesses by providing the prices, real-6me availability, as well as ra6ngs of the trucks. Presently, GIZTIX platform features three main services, including on-demand delivery platform, e-bidding platform, and payment gateway for logis6cs services. As a part of the effort to build the new standard for logis6cs industry, the startup also provides free logis6cs management system to digi6ze the back-end opera6ons for third-party logis6cs service providers.

Over the past 15 months, GIZTIX's revenue has grown on average 30% month-on-month with 700-800 job orders each month from online delivery booking. Currently, there are more than 300 third-party logis6cs companies and 1,500 transport vehicles par6cipa6ng on its platform. B2B represents 99% of its total customers. After its seed funding from KK Fund and 500TukTuks in February 2015, GIZTIX has received several regional awards, such as Dtac Accelerate 2015, Echelon 2015, Techsauce 2016.

Dr.Joshua Pas, Managing Director of AddVentures by SCG, said "we choose GIZTIX as our first direct investment into a startup because we believe in the founders, who have high ambi6on and long-term vision to address problems in the logis6cs industry. Moreover, both GIZTIX and SCG Logis6cs share the common goal of becoming Southeast Asia's leader in this industry".

"After this investment, we will focus on commercial deals with GIZTIX and, at the same 6me,

con6nue to support the ecosystem by ac6ng as the growth platform for startups in B2B, Enterprise, and Industrial ver6cals to scale in Southeast Asia, aligning with our philosophy, 'You Innovate, We Scale'", said Dr.Pas.

"Presently, SCG Logis6cs is considered the largest transporta6on provider in Thailand with 7,000 trucks under management, which could register as the service providers in the platform to minimise their idle 6me. On the demand side, our partners could par6cipate in the marketplace as another means to secure the transporta6on for their goods. With growing regional trades and e-commerce transac6ons in Southeast Asia, GIZTIX has a great poten6al to capture the business opportuni6es in the region".

With a combined popula6on of more than 620 million and a 2.6 trillion economy, Southeast Asia is home to a large logis6cs business. GIZTIX es6mates the logis6cs industry in the region is worth more than $400 billion. The advent of technologies will lead to new opportuni6es and benefit every party.

Mr. Rungroj Poonpol, Venture Partner at 500 Tuktuks, said "we made the follow-on investment because from the first day we met Giz6x founder and his team, we no6ced their extraordinary passion to change logis6cs industry for the better and to make it more efficient, and that was the reason why we decided to invest in Seed Round. Even though market for logis6cs in Thailand is huge and s6ll has rooms for growth especially for B2B, it is an extremely challenging space. By having strong partner like SCG to lead Series A, we believe the business will be able to scale faster and serve larger customer base in the near future.

At the same 6me, GIZTIX has officially announced its partnership with other logis6cs startups to launch the E-Logis6cs Associa6on, chaired by Mr.SiAsak. It has been co-created by the industry players, such as Siam Outlet, Shippop, MyCloudFulfillment, with the goals to develop e-Logis6cs systems and to train logis6cs operators to use them.