Category: Venture Capital

On-demand Logistics Platform GoGoVan Raises $250m

Hong Kong-headquartered on-demand logistics platform GoGoVan has announced that it has raised $250 million in its latest funding round, led by US-based venture capital firm InnoVision Capital.

In a statement on its website, GoGoVan said the funding round was also participated by Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao, Russia-China Investment Fund, Hongrun Capital, Qianhai Fund of Funds, and 58 Daojia Group.

“We’re proud to announce that GoGoVan has raised $250 million in the first phase of its new round of funding. We will use the new funds to expand our service offering and grow new markets. Also, in the next few months, we will offer a new service type, door-to-door service, to fulfill the demand of small-item segment,” the logistics startup said on its Facebook page.

Established in 2013, GoGoVan is the first app-based platform for transporting goods in Asia. The app GoGoVan was created to connect drivers and customers, and we aim to redefine the everyday logistics experience by providing a convenient and efficient service.

Since its successful July 2013 launch in Hong Kong, GoGoVan has expanded to Singapore, South Korea, China, and Taiwan. The GoGoVan network currently comprises of over 20,000 commercial vehicles and 70,000 registered drivers.

In 2017, GoGoVan and Chinese peer 58 Suyun merged to create a $1-billion logistics heavyweight, thus creating Hong Kong’s first unicorn. Following the merger, the combined entity is known as 58 Suyun in China and GoGoVan outside the country.

Also Read: South Korea’s ProtoPie Raises $3.5m in KIP-led Series A

58 Suyun is the freight business unit of 58 Home, which claims to be China’s largest online marketplace serving local merchants and consumers and holds the majority stake in the combined entity.

The merger was said to create Asia’s only online platform to provide end-to-end on-demand logistics and freight services to both corporate and individual customers.

South Korea’s ProtoPie Raises $3.5m in KIP-led Series A

ProtoPie, an interactive prototyping tool for digital product designers, has raised $3.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Korea Investment Partners (KIP), according to Studio XID, the developer of the design tool.

The Series A financing round was led by KIP with the participation of Kolon Investment and POSCO Venture Capital. Korea Investment Partners are known for backing internet startups Naver known to be the largest unicorn in the Korean peninsula and DoubleU Casino a famous social casino gaming publisher.

Since launching ProtoPie commercially last year and raising a Pre-Series A with venture capital firm Evergreen Investment Partners and the investment arms of international giants Samsung and LINE, the prototyping tool has been experiencing significant growth.

Designers in more than 70 countries at renowned companies like Google, Microsoft, Nintendo, IDEO and Alibaba have integrated ProtoPie in their daily workflow.

“We’re empowering designers to create highly interactive prototypes that are hard to distinguish from the actual digital products they design for. This way, designers can validate ideas easily and quickly while bridging the gap with stakeholders. Nowadays, it’s not just apps and websites on a single screen on your phone or computer. Of course, they still dominate the broad spectrum of digital products,” said co-founder and CEO Tony Kim, who has been with Google prior to becoming an entrepreneur.

ProtoPie allows designers to utilize sensors in smart devices, e.g. tilt, proximity and sound sensors when it comes to highly interactive prototyping. Also, designers can easily create prototypes that can communicate with each other by creating interactions across devices.

Also Read: Singapore’s Radiflow Bags $18M from ST Engineering

An example would be realistically mimicking the way drivers and passengers interact in an Uber-like service. Furthermore, prototypes made in ProtoPie can integrate with external hardware like Arduino or littleBits, allowing the possibilities to be endless. These features allow ProtoPie to be at the forefront of prototyping in the software industry.

Singapore’s Radiflow Bags $18M from ST Engineering

Radiflow, a provider of industrial cybersecurity solutions for critical infrastructure, announced that it has raised an $18-million investment round led by ST Engineering Ventures, the Corporate Venture Capital unit of ST Engineering.

Radiflow’s existing investors, led by Zohar Zisapel, also participated in this investment round.

Radiflow provides cybersecurity solutions for industrial control systems (ICS) and Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks.

The company has been one of the pioneers in this market and has been growing rapidly with more than 50 customers worldwide, including Tier 1 critical infrastructure operators in the United States and Europe, and endorsements from leading US national labs and consultants.

Radiflow’s wide product portfolio, which consists of risk assessment, threat detection and secure remote access tools with unique in-depth industrial asset visibility, anomaly detection and distributed architecture, offers extensive use cases and applications for protecting ICS and SCADA networks.

The cybersecurity risks to the conservative industrial market have been recently highlighted with both focused attacks, such as the Triton case, and IT-based attacks, including the cryptocurrency mining malware attack that Radiflow’s iSID system detected at a waste-water facility.

Radiflow is addressing these challenges with its advanced industrial cybersecurity solutions and its rapidly expanding technology partner ecosystem, which includes recently announced collaboration with Palo Alto Networks and RSA, to ease field deployments and ensure compliance with the new regulations, including NERC CIP and the EU NIS Directive.

Radiflow reports that the company is experiencing strong demand for its industrial cybersecurity solutions across all critical infrastructure sectors and has more than doubled the sales of its threat detection tools and services over the past year.

Radiflow will use the investment proceeds to extend its sales network to support the growing market demand, strengthen its brand globally and continue developing its innovative solutions to meet the evolving customer needs.

The investment and partnership enables ST Engineering to access Radiflow’s detection and prevention tools, which has been integrated with its Rail Command, Control and Communications (C3) Systems (SCADA) – in this instant the rail supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system.

The combining of these two technologies has resulted in the development of the region’s first end-to-end cybersecurity solution for the rail transport industry.

“This investment in Radiflow demonstrates ST Engineering’s focus in identifying startups with global best-in-class technologies for collaboration opportunities. The access to our established business networks and channels will help these companies to expand and accelerate the scope of their growth, developing solutions that will benefit our global customers,” said Low Ka Hoe, Chief Strategy Officer at ST Engineering.

“The collaboration between ST Engineering and Radiflow will enable us to introduce our solutions to new customers and territories, while this new investment will facilitate us to expand our market traction and accelerate the next stage of our growth,” commented Ilan Barda, CEO of Radiflow.