Pakistan’s BridgeLinx Raises $10M in Seed Funding Round

BridgeLinx Technologies is on a mission to consolidate Pakistan’s fragmented trucking and logistics industry. It is the latest company to secure a significant cash injection from investors. According to a Bloomberg report published Tuesday (Sept. 14), the digital marketplace for freight cargo has raised $10 million, Pakistan’s largest seed capital investment.  

The funding round for the 9-month-old Lahore-headquartered startup was led by investors including 20VC’s Harry Stebbings, Josh Buckley from Buckley Ventures and Indus Valley Capital. Stebbings and Buckley are already familiar with the Pakistani market, having led a record $85 million round for quick-delivery startup, Airlift, last month.  

Read more: With A Larger Population Than Brazil, Pakistan’s Newly Digital SMBs Offer Huge Opportunity 

Salman Gul, co-founder and chief executive officer at BridgeLinx, said most large manufacturers are facing challenges in the South Asian nation, where the fragmented truck transportation industry means firms end up dealing with as many as 40 transport vendors.   

The startup is seeking to solve this problem by connecting large companies with trucks, offering manufacturers lower fares through bidding between truckers for business.  

And Gul said BridgeLinx has barely “scratched the surface” in the “massive market,” as it keeps adding to its client list of more than a fifth of Pakistan’s top 100 exporters, while moving thousands of freight loads each week. “Initially, we were pulling people on the platform, now they just want to jump on,” he said.  

Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous nation, is enjoying an investment boom, as foreign investors pour record amounts of cash into its startup industry. According to data from venture capital fund Invest2Innovate, local startups have raised over $233 million so far this year, exceeding the amount raised in the previous six years combined.  

Related: Foreign Investors Pour Millions Into Pakistan’s FinTech Startups 

In June, PYMNTS reported that Pakistan’s startups raised $19.3 million in the first quarter of this year, of which almost $15 million came from foreign investors. Last year, a record $48 million was secured in foreign investments.