Bengaluru: Truck aggregator BlackBuck has raised $70 million (Rs 476 crore) from Sands Capital and other existing investors. The company, founded two years ago, has so far raised $100 million and has more than a lakh trucks on the platform.

The Bengaluru-based company, founded by logistics professionals Rajesh Yabaji, Chanakya Hridaya and Ramasubramanian B, will invest the money in the product and engineering as it scales the business. The company is a marketplace for shippers and truck owners and works with companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, ITC and HUL. It has close to 1,000 employees.

The big funding round, coming at a time when there’s a general slowdown in venture funding, shows that money is available for promising businesses. BlackBuck had raised its first round of funding of $5 million from Accel Partners and Flipkart in early 2015, and a second round of $25 million from New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global and Apoletto (Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s Founder Fund), apart from the first-round investors, in December 2015. Sands Capital is a venture capital fund based in Virginia, US.

CEO Yabaji told that the company has been operationally profitable for an year and will be profitable on a net basis in a few months. The company, which has dedicated smartphone apps and web-based portals for customers (large businesses) and truck owners, takes a 10-15% commission on the value of each transaction.

Source: Times of India