Shohoz, a super app that offers ridesharing, deliveries and travel/events ticketing services in Bangladesh, has closed new round of funding led by Vostok New Ventures, a Sweden-listed investment firm focused on online marketplaces.
Others that have joined the round include Silicon Valley-fund Partech Ventures, Heritas Venture Funds, Cypress Capital, Tekton Ventures and existing investor Golden Gate Ventures.
This funding will fuel the company’s further growth and will be spent on new hires, expanding the engineering team, and improving app.
Founded in 2015 by Maliha Quadir, a graduate of Harvard Business School, Shohoz facilitates transportation to thousands of short- and long-distance commuters in Bangladesh, and helps smaller-scale restaurants and other business with sales and deliveries.
Since its last investment in September 2018, Shohoz has launched food delivery services in Dhaka where it claims to be doing 30,000 deliveries per month. Rides has steadily grown to 1.5 million monthly.
The timing of this announcement is on the heels of ADIA announcing a US$5B investment into Bangladesh’s energy sector. Development in the country is on the rise, including the consumer internet class spending more online, as GDP growth of 160 million people has climbed by more than 10 per cent year-over-year for the past five years.
Speaking of the investment, Per Brilloth, MD of Vostok, said: “Through, Shohoz, we look forward to help Maliha with the added impetus to build sustainable on-demand services businesses in Bangladesh, a country that has been experiencing an impressive story of continued macro economic growth over the last couple of years. We wanted to become a partner of Maliha and her team in their strives to make Shohoz a ‘super app’ in Bangladesh.”
“While Shohoz has an attractive scalable business model with compelling market opportunity, the team’s expertise, equipped with their strong execution capabilities, is what enticed Partech to invest in Shohoz,” added Nicolas El Baze, Partner of Partech.
Vostok is an investment company with the business concept of using experience, expertise and a widespread network to identify and invest in assets with considerable potential for value appreciation. The company has a special focus on online marketplaces and businesses with strong network effects. Over the years, Vostok has made a number of notable marketplace and mobility investments, including Avito, BlaBlaCar, Gett, Property Finder, Delivery Hero and Voi Technology.
Source: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bangladesh-ride-sharing-bust-ticket-booking-app-shohoz-041831077.html