KeepTruckin raises $50 million from Google Ventures and others, expands to Islamabad & Lahore

The Silicon Valley startup with its roots in Pakistan, KeepTruckin has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) with participation from existing investors of the startup, Google Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and Index Partners. KeepTruckin has also welcomed two members from IVP to be on their Board of Directors.

KeepTruckin is a fleet management company that builds electronic logging devices (ELDs) for trucking firms providing them with the technology to track vehicles and keeping digital logs of hours driven. It has enabled trucking companies to track their vehicles in real time through GPS, as well as helping them audit driver logs and manage fuel taxes. The smartphone app has also helped drivers to track their hours on the road and maintain their vehicles.

Based out of San Franciso, KeepTruckin has built the largest network of connected trucks in less than five years. With their top rated ELD, they have exceptionally improved efficiency and safety of the trucking industry. The company is led by Shoaib Makani, who quit companies like Google, AdMob and Khosla Ventures to chase his entrepreneurial dream. He kickstarted KeepTruckin in 2013 and later acquired Ingrain.io, a Pakistani startup founded by Ali Rehan and Aamer Zaheer to lead KeepTruckin’s video monitoring product. Today, Rehan is the Director of Product for the company’s video monitoring product while Zaheer is leading research and development.

In Numbers

Over the course of last year, KeepTruckin has progressed many folds, expanding its presence in six global locations. The company has now joined the league of one of the fastest growing SaaS (Software as a Service) companies. KeepTruckin has expanded their customer base from 500 to 30,000 companies and grew their annual recurring revenue by 80 times. In addition to that, the company has grown from 70 to 500 employees working across engineering, operations, sales and support teams.

The freight management company is now expanding into two major cities of Pakistan. KeepTruckin has recently inaugurated an office in Islamabad that will be housing over 500 employees. In addition to that, they are setting up a new office in Lahore to significantly scale their engineering team. Currently, Lahore team comprises of 20 employees that are expected to grow to 200 employees working on most advanced engineering solutions.

What’s Next?

TechJuice reached out to Shoaib Makani, CEO of KeepTrucking to know about the future plans of the company for Pakistan and beyond. Makani shared,

“Right now, we have the most advanced engineering team in Pakistan in terms of being a startup and achieving such international growth. The expansion in Pakistan will assist us in increasing our presence at a global platform to provide our solutions to the international market.”

When asked about if KeepTrucking will be utilizing the funding for building more products or improving the existing solution. Makani responded,

“We are working on a video module that can be integrated with the back-end of our solution. It will be a video safety product that will monitor the roads, ensure that drivers aren’t distracted and the trucks follow the lanes.”

KeepTruckin is aiming to bring over 400,000 trucks into their network by the end of 2018. The company is also expanding its team and is expected to cross over 1000 employees working across different cities to revolutionizing the international trucking industry.