Pakistani trucking marketplace startup Truck It In raises $1.5m in pre-seed round

Pakistan’s Truck It In has raised $1.5 million for its trucking marketplace in a pre-seed round led by Global Founders Capital. This is one of the largest pre-seed investments raised by a startup based in the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan region, as reported by MENAbytes.

Fatima Gobi Ventures, BitRate Venture Capital, Deosai Ventures, +92 Venture and several known angel investors also participated in this pre-seed round.

The Karachi-based startup was launched in August 2020 to simplify road freight in Pakistan. The startup hopes to make freight movement more efficient and improve the lives of truckers and shippers by connecting them through its online platform.

Currently catering to consumers in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, and Faisalabad, the startup allows shippers to book different types of vehicles, including containers, halfbody, flatbed, Mazda, pickup and shehzore for several inter-city routes. In addition to this, the Truck It In platform also offers shippers live tracking and insights at the best rates, and promises Truckers instant loads, round trip assurance and fleet effeciency.

The startup was founded by three innovative entrepreneurs: Muhammad Sarmad Farooq, Raza Afzal, and Haider Navid. All three of them have previously led different functions and categories in startups like Careem and Bykea and have immense experience in this sector.

According to co-founder Sarmad, Truck It In hopes to solve the supply chain inefficiencies in this $25 billion market, that is growing faster as compared to its regional peers, to help unlock more than $1 billion for Pakistani businesses.

Sarmad also that Truck It In is continuously adding hundreds of new truckers to its platform on a weekly basis and is primarily focused on independent truckers, which constitute 80 percent of the available vehicles in the country. The operations team at Truck It In is also working hard to offer higher utilization for these truckers by reducing their idle time through better engagement and back-haul loads.

As trucking becomes a competitive market in Pakistan, several regional and local players have entered this space in the last few months. However, Truck It In hopes to pursue the trucking market differently by focusing heavily on improving its access to supply and creating strategic partnership by leveraging the personal backgrounds of its experienced founders.