Haulio, dubbed "Southeast Asia’s fastest growing digital container haulage platform", has raised US$7 million in a Series A funding round.
The funding round was led by Temasek unit Heliconia Capital, with participation from Ondine Capital (China), Cornerstone Ventures (Taiwan), FuturePlay (South Korea), Newtown Partners via the Imperial Venture Fund (South Africa), and corporate executives from XA Network.
Existing investors including B7 Capital, ComfortDelGro, iSeed SEA, Iterative (United States) and PSA unboXed.
Since 2017, Haulio has transacted more than two million containers with over 50% of the transactions completed in 2021 alone, growing the business further. Haulio expects to triple their revenue numbers by the end of the year as the global supply chain recovers, says the company in a Jan 17 press release.
In April 2021, Haulio officially opened its first regional office in Bangkok, Thailand. It has successfully aggregated more than 3,000 hauliers onto its platform and transacted with key industry stakeholders, such as PSA’s Thailand joint-venture local unit, ESCO.
In under nine months, Haulio’s Thailand office has transacted over 500,000 containers and crossed seven figures in revenue. Last June, Haulio also partnered with shipping and logistics global leader CMA CGM to move its containers on the major inland corridor of Laem Chabang and Lat Krabang.
Alvin Ea, CEO and co-founder (left) and Sebastian Shen, chief product officer and co-founder (Photo: Haulio)
Haulio is actively hiring top talent in strategic business functions to support its growth plans into Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam.
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Derek Lau, chief executive officer at Heliconia Capital, says: “Haulio has created a powerful digital platform that bridges the traditional haulage business offline-online thereby transforming the first-mile logistics operations. The founders’ deep understanding of this business should continue to help accelerate growth domestically and overseas. We look forward to working closely with the team and supporting them.”
Alvin Ea, Haulio's chief executive officer and co-founder, says: “We started Haulio with a bold mission to empower the lives of millions of haulier drivers in Southeast Asia and become the key platform of growth for them through our technology and network effect."
He continues: "The complex and fragmented nature of our business continues to be a challenge especially when container haulage has been a vertical that often gets left behind. This investment will accelerate our regional growth and the transition of haulage standards from offline to online, as we remain steadfast in our vision to haul all containers in and out of Southeast Asia through our platform.”
Partnered with ComfortDelGro and Goldbell
Haulio has also expanded its offeringsto include embedded financing and leasing solutions as it strives to be a key technology partner for the traditional haulier market segment.
In 2021, Haulio partnered with FinTech players Funding Societies and Aspire to offer faster pay-out and supply chain financing, as well as with ComfortDelgro and Goldbell to offer leasing of Prime Mover trucks.
With the rising sustainability pressure on the sector, there is a greater imperative to work alongside Southeast Asia’s port logistics, says Ea.
“Our goal towards zero empty haulage trips in Southeast Asia has seen significant progress through our data-first approach for effective job matching and resource pooling. This has helped reduce the carbon emissions from container trucking and unnecessary transportation of empty containers. Haulio has since optimised over 200,000 containers, saving an estimated 2.92 x 10^6 truck kilometres and over 3,000 metric tonnes of carbon emissions."
Photo: Bloomberg
