Leta, a Kenyan B2B supply chain and logistics SaaS provider, has been looking for growth opportunities in West Africa for the past year to facilitate fleet management, even as it increases operations in its five existing markets.
Leta’s proprietary route and load optimization technology is designed to increase efficiency in delivering goods to customers and reduce the number of vehicles needed for distribution, increasing cost efficiency and competitiveness.
Backed by $3 million in pre-seed funding, the expansion phase looks set to begin in Ghana, and later in Nigeria to expand beyond Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe to the largest distributors and e-commerce players in Nigeria. 4D Capital, Chandaria Capital, Chui Ventures, PNI, Samurai Incubate and Verdant Frontiers FinTech participated in the round. Cellulant founder Ken Njoroge and Google executive Charles Murrito also invested.
“Next year is going to be a big one for us. Our product is stable and we have a very good understanding of our sales process and go-to-market strategy. The capital we’ve raised will help us quickly expand into new markets, starting with Ghana, where we’re launching in December,” Letha’s founder and CEO Nick Joshi told Tech. Crouch said he is also working on transportation marketplace and fintech products.
SaaS provider for businesses, logistics providers and marketplaces
Joshi founded LeTan after two years as VP of Product at Delivery.com in the United States, working with various suppliers to help the marketplace achieve last-mile efficiency in more than 35 states. He said the work made him realize how supply problems are dynamic and will continue to be a challenge everywhere.
This experience prompted him to move home to launch Leta as a change support service for businesses, logistics providers and marketplaces like Sendy and Amitruk.
“We are a logistics operating system, and our software allows us to show distributors a more efficient way to serve customers faster and use fewer assets (vehicles) to serve more customers,” Joshi said.
“It will also track the driver, the specific items being carried, the use of the truck’s load at higher altitudes, the time spent on the journey and whether it has been traveled,” he added.
Businesses can measure other vehicle parameters such as speed, braking and idle time, among other data points that determine the efficiency of operations.
Passengers use the driver app, which shows them all the different stops in sequence, and cross off the delivery confirmation form. Customers will receive a web link to track the delivery of their orders.
Ato Leta said that since the beginning of work, he has facilitated more than 500,000 deliveries, delivered more than 20,000 tons of goods and managed 2,000 vehicles.
Among the more than 20 major businesses the startup is currently working with are pan-African fast food giant Simbisa Brands, fast-moving consumer goods firm Chandaria Industries, which the family office invested in its latest round, B2B e-commerce distribution platform Twiga and ShopZetu, a fashion marketplace. .
“As a leading FMCG player in the region, we are focused on growing our business to better serve the growing demand. Leta has played a major role in streamlining our last mile distribution, and in addition to improved service delivery times, we are seeing meaningful savings in our logistics costs. After working closely with the Leta team “We were impressed by the team, the technology they were building and the scale of the problems they were solving, and it inspired us to invest from Chandaria Capital,” said Darshan Chandaria, CEO of Chandaria Capital.
Joshi said Letha is a first mover in the region and will continue to build and refine its technology IP and products to serve the wide gaps it sees in the market.
The company wants to launch a transportation marketplace that allows customers to request additional delivery vehicles when their fleet is insufficient.
“With our software, there will be a way to request more vehicles and we can quickly connect with more suppliers.”
Our platform also tracks things like usage and we can match them (distributors) with available providers. Why this is so exciting is renting a truck to a customer for a service rather than doing it like other marketplaces do today. One truck can carry many loads because of our load capacity.
The start-up is in talks with finance providers to provide asset finance for customers to expand their fleet.
“We want to do it in a very organized way and our technology is a great foundation that allows us to build other products.”
