Teleport invests in e-commerce provider

Teleport, the cargo and logistics wing of AirAsia that was formerly known as RedCargo Logistics, has – along with venture capital company Gobi Partners – invested $10.6m in regional e-commerce and parcel delivery provider EasyParcel.

EasyParcel has nearly half a million customers, a statement from AirAsia noted, adding that it will use the extra funds to expand its offering for small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers.

The investment will leverage Teleport’s “unrivalled logistics and infrastructure capabilities which include more than 100 cities, 10,000 AirAsia flights per week and some 1,000,000+ tonnes of cargo capacity”, the statement from the low-cost carrier declared.

Tony Fernandes, chief executive of AirAsia Group, commented: “I’ve always believed AirAsia’s logistics business has a huge opportunity to be part of the social and e-commerce ecosystem.

“Today, we are unlocking that potential with the help of EasyParcel, making parcel delivery across ASEAN more accessible and inclusive for everyone.”

ASEAN is the Association of South East Asian Nations region; it takes in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Pete Chareonwongsak, chief executive of Teleport, observed: “Teleport will transform the logistics and e-commerce ecosystem as we know it, making it easier for people, especially SMEs, to move items from A to B.

“With our deep operational expertise, this investment will allow us to accelerate the accessibility of logistics for SMEs, while at the same time encourage more collaboration with the region’s logistics start-up community.”

Gobi Partners chairman and founding partner Thomas G Tsao stated: “We are glad to be co-investing with AirAsia’s Teleport. Together, we will combine our efforts to help EasyParcel solve Southeast Asia’s logistics bottlenecks and boost the industry’s data analytics.

“As a platform, EasyParcel is uniquely positioned to streamline the customer’s full journey by integrating end-to-end logistics services with its partners.

“This generates operating efficiencies overall and creates synergies for the entire ecosystem, including our existing logistics investments, Deliveree and Zoom.”

Finally, EasyParcel founder and chief executive Clarence Leong said: “Our mission is to address last-mile delivery challenges.

“Since we started in 2014, we’ve been successfully making in-roads in our home country, Malaysia, as well as in Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. The funding received from Teleport and Gobi Partners is key to strengthening our footprint in those existing markets.”

Leong also noted that this latest funding, described as a ‘Series B round’, follows a successful series A funding round, which was secured from Axiata Digital Innovation Fund (ADIF) and angel investors in January 2016.

This latest B round of investment has been funded by Teleport from retained earnings, whilst Gobi Partners is making its investment through the Meranti Asean Growth Fund, a fund which seeks to invest in innovation such as cloud services, e-commerce and financial technology in the ASEAN region.

Founded in 2018 and previouslyknown as RedCargo Logistics, Teleport is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kuala Lumpur-headquartered AirAsia Group.