In a sign that investments in the supply chain sector remain strong, Pando, a startup developing fulfillment management technologies, today announced that it has raised $30 million in a Series B round, bringing its total to $45 million.
Iron Pillar and Uncorrelated Ventures led the round, with existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Chiratae Ventures and Next47 also participating. CEO and founder Nitin Jayakrishnan says the new capital will go towards expanding Pando’s global sales, marketing and delivery capabilities.
“We are not going to 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 jointly launched by Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar, who previously worked together on iDelivery, a shipping technology marketplace in India – and their first startup. The two saw first-hand that manufacturers, distributors and retailers were struggling with outdated technology and point solutions to understand, improve and manage their global logistics operations – or at least that’s the story Jayakrishnan tells.
“Supply chain leaders were trying to build their own technology and throw people at the problem,” he said. “This caught our attention–us He spent months talking to warehouse and build enterprise users for them, Factories, shipping yards, ports, and ultimately, in 2018, I decided to start Pando to create global logistics solutions by offering a software-as-a-service platform.”
There is truth in Jayakrishnan’s expression of pent-up demand. According to a recent McKinsey survey, supply chain companies had — and have — a strong desire for tools that provide greater supply chain visibility. Sixty-seven percent of survey respondents said they have implemented dashboards for this purpose, while more than half said they are investing in supply chain visibility services more broadly.
Pando aims to meet a need by integrating supply chain data that resides in multiple silos inside and outside the organization, including data on customers, suppliers, logistics providers, facilities, and product SKUs. The platform provides various tools and applications to accomplish various tasks across freight procurement, trade and transportation management, freight auditing, payments and document management, as well as dispatch planning and analytics.
Customers can customize tools and applications or create their own using Pando APIs. This, along with the platform’s focus on no-code capabilities, sets Pando apart from incumbents like SAP, Oracle, Blue Yonder, and E2Open, Jayakrishnan asserts.
“Pando comes pre-integrated with leading ERP systems and has ready APIs and a professional services team to integrate with any new ERP and enterprise systems,” he added. “Pando’s code-free capabilities allow business users to customize applications while maintaining platform integrity – reducing the need for IT resources for each customization.”
Pando is doing its best to automate the processes around the supply chain. Image credits: Bando
Pando also uses algorithms and forms of machine learning to make predictions about supply chain events. For example, the platform attempts to match customer orders with suppliers and customers through the “right” channel (in terms of aspects such as cost and carbon emissions) and execution strategy (such as shipping method, carrier, etc.). Moreover, Pando can detect anomalies between deliveries, orders, and freight bills and predict supply chain risks given supply and demand trends.
Pando isn’t the only seller doing this. Altana, which secured $100 million in venture capital last October, uses an AI system to connect to and learn from logistics and business data — creating a shared view of supply chain networks. Everstream, another Pando competitor, offers its own data analytics dashboards, integrated with existing enterprise resource planning (ERP), transportation management, and supplier relationship management systems.
But Pando has a compelling sales proposition, 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. Jayakrishnan said that since the startup’s first series in 2020, revenue has grown 8-fold while the number of customers has increased 5-fold.
When asked if he expects expansion to continue in the future, given signs of potential trouble on the horizon, Jayakrishnan sounded rather optimistic. He pointed to a Deloitte survey that found more than 70% of manufacturing companies were affected by supply chain disruptions in the past year, with 90% of those companies experiencing increased costs and decreased productivity.
The result of such great disturbances? It’s estimated that the digital logistics market will grow to $46.5 billion by 2025, per market and by market — compared to $17.4 billion in 2019. Crunchbase reports that investors injected more than $7 billion in seed through growth-stage rounds on The global share of supply chain-focused startups from January to October 2022, nearly surpassing the record highs of 2021.
“Pandu has a strong balance sheet and profit and loss statement, with a focus on earnings growth,” Jayakrishnan said. “We are expanding our operations in North America, Europe and India with notable customer wins and a strong network of partners… Pando is well positioned to ride this wave of growth, driving supply chain resilience for Economy 2030.”