Signaling that investments in the supply chain sector remain robust, Pando, a startup developing fulfillment management technologies, today announced that it raised $30 million in a Series B round, bringing its total raised to $45 million.
Iron Pillar and Uncorrelated Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Chiratae Ventures and Next47. CEO and founder Nitin Jayakrishnan says that the new capital will be put toward expanding Pando’s global sales, marketing and delivery capabilities.
“We will not expand into new industries or adjacent product areas,” he told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Great talent is the foundation of the business — we will continue to augment our teams at all levels of the organization. Pando is also open to exploring strategic partnerships and acquisitions with this round of funding.”
Pando was co-launched by Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar, who previously worked together at iDelivery, an India-based freight tech marketplace — and their first startup. The two saw firsthand manufacturers, distributors and retailers were struggling with legacy tech and point solutions to understand, optimize and manage their global logistics operations — or at least, that’s the story Jayakrishnan tells.
“Supply chain leaders were trying to build their own tech and throwing people at the problem,” he said. “This caught our attention — we spent months talking to and building for enterprise users at warehouses, factories, freight yards and ports and eventually, in 2018, decided to start Pando to solve for global logistics through a software-as-a-service platform offering.”
There’s truth to what Jayakrishnan’s expressing about pent-up demand. According to a recent McKinsey survey, supply chain companies had — and have — a strong desire for tools that deliver greater supply chain visibility. Sixty-seven percent of respondents to the survey say that they’ve implemented dashboards for this purpose, while over half say that they’re investing in supply chain visibility services more broadly.
Pando aims to meet the need by consolidating supply chain data that resides in multiple silos within and outside of the enterprise, including data on customers, suppliers, logistics service providers, facilities and product SKUs. The platform provides various tools and apps for accomplishing different tasks across freight procurement, trade and transport management, freight audit and payment and document management, as well as dispatch planning and analytics.
Customers can customize the tools and apps or build their own using Pando’s APIs. This, along with the platform’s emphasis on no-code capabilities, differentiates Pando from incumbents like SAP, Oracle, Blue Yonder and E2Open, Jayakrishnan asserts.
“Pando comes pre-integrated with leading enterprise resource planning (ERPs) systems and has ready APIs and a professional services team to integrate with any new ERPs and enterprise systems,” he added. “Pando’s no-code capabilities enable business users to customize the apps while maintaining platform integrity — reducing the need for IT resources for each customization.”
Pando makes a best effort to automate processes around the supply chain. Image Credits: Pando
Pando also taps algorithms and forms of machine learning to make predictions around supply chain events. For example, the platform attempts to match customer orders with suppliers, customers through the “right” channel (in terms of aspects like cost and carbon footprint) and fulfillment strategy (e.g. mode of freight, carrier, etc.). Beyond this, Pando can detect anomalies among deliveries, orders and freight invoices and anticipate supply chain risk given demand and supply trends.
Pando isn’t the only vendor doing this. Altana, which bagged $100 million in venture capital last October, uses an AI system to connect to and learn from logistics and business-to-business data — creating a shared view of supply chain networks. Everstream, another Pando rival, offers its own dashboards for data analysis, integrated with existing ERP, transportation management and supplier relationship management systems.
But Pando has a compelling sales pitch, judging by its momentum. The company counts Fortune 500 manufacturers and retailers — including P&G, J&J, Valvoline, Castrol, Cummins, Siemens, Danaher and Accuride — among its customer base. Since the startup’s Series A in 2020, revenue has grown 8x while the number of customers has increased 5x, Jayakrishnan said.
Asked whether he expects expansion to continue well into the future, given the signs of potential trouble on the horizon, Jayakrishnan seemed fairly optimistic. He pointed to a Deloitte survey that found that more than 70% of manufacturing companies have been impacted by supply chain disruptions in the past year, with 90% of those companies experiencing increased costs and declining productivity.
The result of those major disruptions? The digital logistics market is estimated to climb to $46.5 billion by 2025, per Markets and Markets — up from $17.4 billion in 2019. Crunchbase reports that investors poured more than $7 billion in seed through growth-stage rounds globally for supply chain-focused startups from January to October 2022, nearly eclipsing 2021’s record-setting levels.
“Pando has a strong balance sheet and profit and loss statement, with an eye on profitable growth,” Jayakrishnan said. “We’re are scaling operations in North America, Europe and India with marquee customer wins and a network of strong partners … Pando is well-positioned to ride this growth wave, and drive supply chain agility for the 2030 economy.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Tesla soared Wednesday as investors bet that the electric vehicle maker and its CEO Elon Musk will benefit from Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Tesla stands to make significant gains under a Trump administration with the threat of diminished subsidies for alternative energy and electric vehicles doing the most harm to smaller competitors. Trump’s plans for extensive tariffs on Chinese imports make it less likely that Chinese EVs will be sold in bulk in the U.S. anytime soon.
“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, in a note to investors. “This dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players.”
Tesla shares jumped 14.8% Wednesday while shares of rival electric vehicle makers tumbled. Nio, based in Shanghai, fell 5.3%. Shares of electric truck maker Rivian dropped 8.3% and Lucid Group fell 5.3%.
Tesla dominates sales of electric vehicles in the U.S, with 48.9% in market share through the middle of 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Subsidies for clean energy are part of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. It included tax credits for manufacturing, along with tax credits for consumers of electric vehicles.
Musk was one of Trump’s biggest donors, spending at least $119 million mobilizing Trump’s supporters to back the Republican nominee. He also pledged to give away $1 million a day to voters signing a petition for his political action committee.
In some ways, it has been a rocky year for Tesla, with sales and profit declining through the first half of the year. Profit did rise 17.3% in the third quarter.
The U.S. opened an investigation into the company’s “Full Self-Driving” system after reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. The investigation covers roughly 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.
And investors sent company shares tumbling last month after Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night, seeing not much progress at Tesla on autonomous vehicles while other companies have been making notable progress.
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 100 points in late-morning trading, helped by strength in base metal and utility stocks, while U.S. stock markets were mixed.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 103.40 points at 24,542.48.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 192.31 points at 42,932.73. The S&P 500 index was up 7.14 points at 5,822.40, while the Nasdaq composite was down 9.03 points at 18,306.56.
The Canadian dollar traded for 72.61 cents US compared with 72.44 cents US on Tuesday.
The November crude oil contract was down 71 cents at US$69.87 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down eight cents at US$2.42 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$7.20 at US$2,686.10 an ounce and the December copper contract was up a penny at US$4.35 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 200 points in late-morning trading, while U.S. stock markets were also headed higher.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 205.86 points at 24,508.12.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 336.62 points at 42,790.74. The S&P 500 index was up 34.19 points at 5,814.24, while the Nasdaq composite was up 60.27 points at 18.342.32.
The Canadian dollar traded for 72.61 cents US compared with 72.71 cents US on Thursday.
The November crude oil contract was down 15 cents at US$75.70 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down two cents at US$2.65 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was down US$29.60 at US$2,668.90 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents at US$4.47 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2024.
