Freight logistic startup FR8 secures funding from Omnivore Partners

Chennai-based freight logistic startup FR8 has secured $1 Million approx (INR 6.5 Cr) from Omnivore Partners, an early stage agritech-focussed investment fund. The funding will be used for the rapid expansion of the company, they are planning to operate from 17 cities by 2017. Currently, they have presence in Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Madurai.

According to a statement from the company, the platform currently has 2,500 trucks from 400 vendors on its marketplace. It also claims to book around 1,000 orders worth about $374K (INR 2.5 Cr) per month.

Vasanth Immanuel, co-founder, FR8 said, “We offer a four-hour commitment to our clients and manually connect orders which have not gotten matched automatically. We believe that we are very capital-efficient as we have scaled to $374K of monthly bookings without raising any capital. We are planning to grow 10 times over the next 12 months. We plan to expand the network from seven cities – Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Madurai.”

Commenting on the investment, Mark Kahn, Founding Partner, Omnivore said, “Omnivore believes that FR8 will transform long-haul trucking across India while benefiting the agribusiness ecosystem through optimised backhauling of farm commodities.”