Instant delivery startup RaRa Delivery has announced $3.25 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge and Indonesia’s East Ventures.
RaRa Delivery is Southeast Asia’s only last-mile logistics company revolutionising one to three-hour deliveries for e-commerce through their data-driven approach and proprietary technology, a release said.
The company is on a mission to move all Indonesian deliveries to instant and same-day. RaRa Delivery’s tech team is based in India, with an aim of scaling its India operations from 10 to 40 in the next six months.
Instant gratification is becoming a norm across consumer categories as people’s online ordering habits change, with rapid deliveries fast becoming a need rather than a luxury. In Indonesia, consumer appetite for fast convenience has risen and consumers are willing to pay a premium for fast deliveries.
The market size for same-day delivery is expected to grow to 30%, totalling 4.5 million parcels a day by 2023, and premium logistics charges for same-day delivery services is projected to increase to IDR 65 trillion in 2023, up from IDR 4.4 trillion in 2018, thereby outpacing the growth in other delivery services.
When it comes to e-commerce in Indonesia, the challenge is building out the technology and infrastructure to solve for scalable, fast deliveries at the most optimal cost in such a large, populous country. There is a significant market opportunity for a last mile delivery company specialising in instant delivery infrastructure catering to multiple merchants through one seamless interface.
Founded in 2019, RaRa Delivery’s mission is to make this possible by leveraging a differentiated operating model and real-time batching technology. While other companies with express logistics infrastructure are focusing on ‘one-to-one’ deliveries, Rara has developed proprietary, real-time batching technology to do ‘many-to-many’ deliveries within a few hours, hence bringing down the eventual cost of delivery for customers.
The company is also focusing on integrating their services into all major online marketplaces in Southeast Asia to allow any seller to offer instant and same day deliveries to their customers.
RaRa Delivery has ramped up its offering given the rising demand for instant groceries and medical supply delivery services in response to the global pandemic. The startup counts grocery players such as Sayurbox, as well as healthtech company Alodoktor as key customers and has been providing essential one to three hour delivery windows required for food and medical supplies in this crucial time of Indonesia’s fight against COVID-19.
The customer experience benefits are felt by large merchants and marketplaces that generate huge demand. RaRa has been able to deliver three-hour deliveries up to 20% cheaper due to the efficiencies of batching technology.
“In this age of instant gratification, RaRa Delivery is revolutionising logistics by making it possible for anyone, anywhere to get delivery in a few hours in Indonesia. While the express delivery space has been flourishing in sectors such as groceries and healthcare, we saw a unique opportunity to scale this offering across all categories, as customer expectations grow alongside the maturity of Indonesia’s e-commerce sector,” said RaRa Delivery Founder and CEO Karan Bhardwaj.
“Through our smart batching system and with our dedicated driver team, our vision of creating an ecosystem that allows e-commerce marketplaces and sellers to provide a premium customer experience to their end consumers is now becoming a reality, starting first in Indonesia,” added Bhardwaj.
Besides the one to three-hour delivery, RaRa’s platform offers customers reliability and convenience through real-time notifications and status updates. RaRa Delivery is also one of the few businesses in Indonesia to do real-time reconciliation of Cash on Delivery (COD) through the platform. The company has grown 15x over the past one year.
“RaRa Delivery has been our trusted delivery partner since the launch of Cerita Roti in November 2020. Today, partnering with RaRa has enabled us to serve good quality breads to our customers through Kopi Kenangan outlets in Jabodetabek. The speed and agility of their offering ensures we can continue to deliver on our promise of an exceptional customer experience,” said Kopi Kenangan VP Jack Siah.
RaRa Delivery was founded in Singapore in July 2019 by Karan Bhardwaj, who graduated from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore with a major in Engineering and a minor in Business and Entrepreneurship. Prior to founding RaRa Delivery, he was managing the end-to-end e-commerce supply chain at Unilever across Southeast Asia and Australasia.
Led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge and Indonesia’s East Ventures, the funding of RaRa Delivery is supported by 500 Startups, Angel Central, GK Plug and Play, and angel investors Royston Tay and Yang Bin Kwok.
RaRa Delivery is part of Surge’s fifth cohort of 23 companies that have developed new digital solutions to help companies and individuals live, work and learn better in a rapidly evolving Southeast Asian landscape.
