GoGoVan, Hong Kong’s homegrown success story, has raised an additional US $10 million from RenRen Inc. “The Facebook of China” took a 10% stake in the logistics tech startup, becoming a minority shareholder.
Since their launch in July 2013, GoGoVan has been in the fast lane and have established the largest logistics fleet in Hong Kong, having signed up over 20,000 registered commercial vehicles. After successfully testing the expansion waters in Singapore and operating a fleet there with more than 3,000 vehicles, GoGoVan has moved onto Taipei and plan in expanding to Sydney, Melbourne and Seoul by the end of this year.
Remember our post back in February where we named GoGoVan co-founder Steven Lam one of the ‘Top 3 Hong Kong Founders to Watch?’ Back then, GoGoVan already had 12,000+ drivers downloading the app and over 100,000 user downloads and now they’ve scaled up to 74,000 registered drivers and over 500,000 user downloads. And just three months ago, GoGoVan raised a huge series A round of $6.5 million and have now added an additional $10 million to their account to fund their expansion into China. Talk about pedal to the metal.
According to Lam, GoGoVan didn’t need the extra cash but was looking for a strategic investor to enter the Mainland market. The team hasn’t decided which Chinese metropolitan city to launch in just yet. Besides rapid expansion, GoGoVan has recently upgraded their office space from 100 to 600 square feet in Kwun Tong and is planning on growing their team in all directions.
Lam said the team is hiring like crazy as they are always short of manpower to compensate for the sheer speed of GoGoVan’s growth – roles open include: engineers, UX and UI designers, social media and online marketing people, a biz dev person, a city manager, an accounting clerk, a data scientist and interns. Check out a detailed list of roles here.
What makes the GoGoVan story truly inspirational is that they are a Hong Kong startup through and through. All three founders were born and raised in Hong Kong and according to this interview Lam did with WSJ last week – came from low-income families and had to pay their own way through university in California. Out of necessity came the hustle, and Lam – along with Reeve Kwan and Nick Tang worked odd side jobs such as fixing people’s cars, computers and selling iPhones on eBay.
As the ease of incorporating a company in the US pales in comparison to Hong Kong, the three friends moved home and raised a seed round of HK $50,000 to launch their lunchbox advertising startup. After running that company for nine months, the enterprising trio realized that logistics and problematic call centers was a real issue in their home city which led to the genesis of GoGoVan.
While Hong Kong is often snubbed for its small local market, startups can use its unique attributes in the favor. Besides its obvious geographical advantages as a logistics hub and gateway to China, Hong Kong is also useful as a test market for startups looking to expand to Asia-Pacific region and GoGoVan has succeeded wildly in this respect.
Watch Steven Lam “pitch” GoGoVan at our ‘Startups of Future Past’ event (8:50 mark).
GoGoVan on Startbase.HK: GoGoVan
Steven Lam on Startbase.HK: Steven Lam
