Nelly Mcarlton 
Today, Fluid Truck, an e-commerce platform for car and truck parts and accessories, announced that it has closed a $63 million Series A led by Bison Capital, joined by Ingka Investments and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas. This marks a major milestone for the San Francisco startup and is the latest in a series of successes for the company.
Let’s dive into the details of this exciting investment.
Fluid Truck Closes $63 Million Series A Round Led by Bison Capital – Joined by Ingka Investments & Sumitomo Corporation of Americas
Fluid Truck is a full-service refrigerated transportation technology company dedicated to transforming the cold food supply chain. Founded in 2015, Fluid Truck has developed a complete, end-to-end platform that reduces costs and creates more efficiency, transparency and safety in the movement of food products.
The company has built an all-in-one transportation software solution for shippers, carriers and brokers – from managing capacity needs through a dynamic marketplace to providing integrated compliance management solutions that automate processes and documents; from providing in-cab analytics for smarter driver decisions to offering omni-channel contracting tools through its unique platform – Fluid Truck is transforming refrigerated trucking.
Fluid Truck provides services across seven routes, connecting various regions across North America. By utilizing proprietary logistics algorithms and machine learning technologies, their platform can provide their customers with maximum cost savings while ensuring reliability, improved visibility and compliance throughout their network of carriers.
Series A Round
Fluid Truck, Inc. recently announced the successful closing of their Series A fundraising round led by Bison Capital, with Ingka Investments and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas also participating.
The new round of funding gives the California-based startup $63 million to invest in their groundbreaking fleet-management technology. With this new influx of capital, the company will be able to accelerate the development of its technology and grow its operations.
Details of the Series A Round
Fluid Truck, a logistics platform that connects shippers of irregular-sized shipments to truckers, recently closed a Series A round of funding co-led by Bison Capital and Chengwei Capital. The funds will further expand Fluid Truck’s end-to-end digital platform and add additional services including warehouse management and integration with major last mile delivery providers.
The details of the Series A Round include:
- Total size: $45 million
- Co-Lead Investors: Bison Capital and Chengwei Capital
- Other investors: Silk Road Fund, Cainiao Logistics Technology Co., Ltd., Shenzhen VC Fund, CCVT Venture Partners, Asia300 Fund
- Post money valuation: $250 million
- Use of funds: Expand Fluid Truck’s platform capabilities through product development and deep technology integrations with major last mile delivery providers. Funds will also be used to hire additional staff and expand into new markets.
Lead Investor: Bison Capital
Fluid Truck is proud to announce that Bison Capital has joined the company’s recent Series A investment round as its lead investor. Bison Capital is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage companies relevant to the transportation and logistics industries. The firm based out of Shanghai is well known for getting behind companies with an innovative edge and has expressed great enthusiasm for Fluid Truck’s technology and vision.
Fluid Truck is a California-based technology startup specializing in data-driven freight flow optimization, a challenging problem in the transportation industry. Through its software, which uses real-time data analytics to optimize decisions around shipment routing, warehouse inventory management and parking lot capacity, Fluid Truck provides clients with actionable insights to improve their operations while cutting costs and eliminating waste in every corner of their supply chain processes. The company’s proprietary technology platform makes it easy for customers to consult their operation performance quickly and capture additional efficiency opportunities across the board.
The funding will be used to fuel product development, boost customer acquisition endeavours, strengthen the team, drive go-to-market strategy execution as well as geographic expansion. Fluid Truck will benefit from Bison Capital’s wide network of investors and deep knowledge of the logistics industry when aligning with strategic partners for joint growth initiatives.
Participating Investors: Ingka Investments & Sumitomo Corporation of Americas
Fluid Truck is pleased to announce it has closed a Series A round of equity financing led by Bison Capital. Notable investors included Ingka Investments and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, alongside several notable venture capital and family office partners.
The proceeds from the funding round will help propel Fluid Truck to continue its mission to accelerate the digital transformation for businesses to maximize their results. This investment will help Fluid Truck support fleets, manage complex compliance requirements, save operational costs, and reduce carbon emissions. With this round of financing, Fluid Truck will be able to continue its rapid international expansion while focusing on providing an unparalleled customer experience and expanding product offerings.
Fluid Truck is seeing strong growth in fleets globally as customers are experiencing increased efficiency with improved operations vis-a-vis automated compliance, telematics performance data integration capabilities, and reporting analytics. The capital raised by this funding round will allow us invest in additional deployments of our proprietary technology platform across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific regions throughout 2021, in addition ot improving the technology stack which can become even more valuable for our customers as globalization becomes more important for fleet operators globally.
Impact of the Series A Round
Fluid Truck recently announced the success of their Series A round and raised $63 million, with Bison Capital as the lead investor. This investment round was joined by Ingka Investments & Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, and marks an incredible milestone for the company.
It’s exciting to see the impact this Series A round will have on Fluid Truck’s future. Let’s explore the possibilities.
How the Series A Round will help Fluid Truck
The Series A round of funding for Fluid Truck will help the company to continue developing and improving its proprietary digital platform that streamlines the process of matching fleet owners with shippers who need their services. This platform, currently available on Android and iOS devices, simplifies the booking, tracking and payment processes for both groups.
The funding from this round will allow Fluid Truck to expand its operations beyond its current home base in the US, investing in international growth and regional expansion. Additionally, the influx of funds will be used to extend outreach efforts to more potential users including providing better customer service depending on geography through regional partners.
The Series A round will also allow the company to invest further in research and development of their platform by adding new features such as an offering where customers can order a shipment or even bundle multiple loads into one order and receive bulk discount rates. Moreover, new payment options such an integrated billing system will reduce payment-related friction while enhancing flexibility and convenience for shippers. Ultimately this could open up Fluid Truck’s services to people in remote regions where typical collection processes would otherwise be limited or unavailable.
The Benefits of the Series A Round for Investors
For investors, participating in a Series A round typically offers a variety of benefits. The minimum investment requirement is usually lower than other rounds and the risk is generally viewed as low since, at this stage, startups usually have an existing and successful product or service that has already been tested in the market.
In exchange for their investment, investors receive shares in the company which can lead to attractive returns on their original capital if the startup scales successfully. Furthermore, investing in a series A round often grants investors voting rights over ownership and control decisions which can be crucial during later funding events.
Investors also benefit from taking prevention measures against technical issues. By ensuring that all stakeholders involved hold appropriate paperwork, filing systems, databases and contracts are implemented correctly as early as possible it ensures clear definitions of ownership during exit events such as Initial Public Offerings (IPO). This helps to establish a successful outcome for both the founders and investors when exiting their stake in the business.
Conclusion
Fluid Truck recently announced the successful closing of its $63 million Series A financing round, led by Bison Capital. Other participants include Ingka Investments and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas. This successful funding round is a testament to the company’s innovative approach to transportation, and will enable them to expand their operations and launch new services.
In this section, we’ll look at the key takeaways from this investment round and how it will benefit the company going forward.
Summary of Fluid Truck’s Series A Round
Fluid Truck, Inc. has successfully closed a $25 million Series A round of funding with Bison Capital, an investment fund specializing in early-stage tech companies. The funding will accelerate product development, hire new team members and invest in further technology improvements.
The start-up was founded in 2019 by CEO and Co-Founder Nandan Rafanashi to create an intuitive mobile platform that makes it simpler to manage medium-sized fleets of food trucks. Fluid Truck’s product suite – which includes everything from real time meal orders for catering companies to customized management software for fleet owners – provides customers with an end-to-end solution as they look to optimize their operations.
This fundraising round brings Fluid Truck’s total money raised since launch to nearly $30 million, which includes additional investments from Humboldt Ventures and prior investors such as WP Global Partners. With this new injection of capital, Fluid Truck plans on swift growth through creating more jobs, increasing sales and marketing activities and expanding the business into other cities across the United States.
The company is setting out on a trajectory that puts it at the forefront of revolutionizing logistics operations management for medium sized fleets. This round will enable them to further develop their industry leading fleet management platform and scale its operations nationwide soon.
