Haulio, a digital container haulage platform based in Singapore, has raised $7 million in a Series A funding, led by Temasek unit Heliconia Capital. Haulio will use the added funds to improve its hauling capabilities, quality of service, and product engineering and innovation. The startup is also pursuing its regional expansion goals across Southeast Asia. Ondine Capital (China), Cornerstone Ventures (Taiwan), FuturePlay (South Korea), Newtown Partners via the Imperial Venture Fund (South Africa), and XA Network are among the new investors in the round. B7 Capital, ComfortDelGro, iSeed SEA, Iterative (US), and PSA unboxed, among its current investors, also took part.
“Container shipping volumes are on the rapid rise, so there needs to be greater optimisation and streamlining of haulage trips, given the increasing shortage in equipment and drivers,” said Alvin Ea, founder of Haolio. “The complex and fragmented nature of our business continues to be a challenge, especially when container haulage has been a vertical that often gets left behind.”
Haulio connects hauliers and shippers and was founded in 2016 by CEO Alvin Ea and CPO Sebastian Shen. It claims to have onboarded 90% of Singapore’s hauliers, as well as having launched operations in Indonesia and Thailand. It has gathered almost 3,000 hauliers in Thailand alone. The company offers shippers prime mover and trailer rental and leasing, as well as embedded finance. Haulio claims to have processed more than two million containers as of currently, with more than half of those transactions completed in 2021 alone. As the global supply chain recovers, the startup plans to triple its revenue by the end of 2022. Due to its successful task matching and resource pooling, it also helps minimise carbon emissions from container shipping and needless transportation of empty containers. So far, they have optimised over 200,00 containers, saving over 3,000 metric tonnes of CO2.
