Toyota Tsusho Corporation, the trading arm of automotive manufacturer Toyota, has contributed to a $20m series B round for Kenya-based on-demand delivery service Sendy, TechCrunch reported today.
Venture capital fund Atlantica Ventures led the round, which boosted the company’s total funding to more than $27m since it was founded in 2015.
Sendy’s service allows businesses to deliver products door to door through a network of drivers that get allocated jobs through the company’s platform. It also offers software helps organisations optimise their own logistics processes.
The company takes a percentage of each transaction leveraged through its app and will put the series B proceeds toward technology development and increasing headcount.
The deal comes after Sendy formed a partnership with two Toyota entities – Tsusho Capital and Hino Kenya, Toyota Kenya’s commercial vehicle division – in August 2019 to lease trucks to its drivers.
Telecommunications firm Safaricom supplied an undisclosed amount of funding for Sendy in 2015 through its Spark Fund, before unnamed investors added $3m two years later.
The company closed a $2m series A round in early 2018 that was led by impact investment firm DOB Equity and backed by CFAO Automotive, an African distribution subsidiary of Toyota. It received a further $2m from another impact investment firm, Goodwell Investments, in October 2019.
