VEB Ventures, the subsidiary of Russian development bank VEB.RF (former VneshEkonomBank), has invested RUB500mn ($7mn) in the cargo flow digitisation start-up Deliver, Kommersant daily reported on January 13.
The financing provided by VEB.RF will be used to scale up Deliver's solutions, expanding the geography and launching new services for both clients and carriers.
Deliver provides b2b cargo flow management solutions, as a "cargo Uber" linking clients and carriers. It has over 59,000 companies connected to the platform, securing Full Truck Load (FTL) deliveries and using AI for planning the itinerary and scoring the drivers.
Previously Deliver raised over $10mn of funds from the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), A&NN Investments of billionaire Alexander Mamuth, InVenture Partners, Amereus Group and UAE's Mubadala.
VEB Ventures estimates that the Russian FTL market stood at RUB916bn ($12.4bn) in 2019 and will continue growing by 9% annually by 2023.
Analysts surveyed by Kommersant note that the truck carriers are very fragmented (the top ten players account for only 2% of total market revenues), thus seeing high potential for marketplace platform solutions such as Deliver.
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