Leta, a Kenyan B2B supply chain and logistics SaaS provider founded last year to optimize fleet management, is exploring opportunities in West Africa as well as expanding in its five current regions.
A patented route and load optimization technology from Leta will improve delivery efficiency and reduce the number of vehicles required for distribution, resulting in cost savings and improved competitiveness.
In order to expand outside of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, the startup is looking to partner with some of the biggest distributors and e-commerce players in Ghana and later Nigeria. A $3 million pre-seed investment supports this phase of growth. The following investors attended the round: 4Di Capital, Chandaria Capital, Chui Ventures, PANI, Samurai Incubate, and Verdant Frontiers Fintech. Both Charles Murito, a Google executive, and Ken Njoroge, a co-founder of Cellulant, made investments.
“Our upcoming year will be fairly significant for us. We have a solid grasp of both our sales process and go-to-market strategy, and our product has stabilized. According to Leta founder and CEO Nick Joshi, “the money we have raised will assist us to quickly scale into additional areas beginning with Ghana, where we will launch in December.” Leta is also developing financial products and a transit marketplace; he told TechCrunch.
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Leta, a SaaS company that serves marketplaces, enterprises, and logistics providers
After serving for two years as the vice president of products at Delivery.com in the US, where he worked with several providers to improve the marketplace’s last-mile performance in more than 35 states, Joshi created Leta. He claimed that the work let him realize how delivery issues are fluid and would always be difficult to solve.
After having this experience, he decided to return to his hometown and start Leta, a revolutionary support platform for companies, logistics services, and online marketplaces like Sendy and Amitruck.
We are an operating system for logistics, and our software can show distributors the fastest way to service clients while allowing them to employ fewer assets (vehicles) to serve more customers, according to Joshi.
Additionally, it allows for the tracking of the driver, the particular commodities being transported, the loading of the truck to determine whether space is being utilized to its full potential, the amount of time spent travelling, and the distance covered, the expert continued.
Businesses can also measure speed, stopping time, and idling time, which are all factors that affect how well a vehicle works.
Haulers use the driver app, which displays all the necessary steps in order and signs off a paper to prove delivery. Customers obtain a web address to track the delivery of their orders on their end.
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More on Leta
Leta claims that since its start, it has handled 2,000 vehicles, delivered more than 20,000 tons of cargo, and optimized over 500,000 deliveries.
It has partnered with more than 20 big companies, including fast-food giant Simbisa Brands, fast-moving consumer goods conglomerate Chandaria Industries, whose family office invested in its most recent round, B2B e-commerce distribution platform Twiga, and fashion marketplace ShopZetu.
“As a major FMCG company in the area, we are constantly working to improve our operations so that we can meet the expanding demand.” We are experiencing significant savings on our logistics expenditures as well as a quicker service delivery time because of Leta’s crucial contribution to our last-mile distribution optimization. After spending a lot of time with the Leta team, we were pleased with the group, the technology they are developing, and the size of the problem they are addressing, which led to Chandaria Capital’s investment. Darshan Chandaria, CEO of Chandaria Capital, stated
Leta, according to Joshi, has an early-mover advantage in the area and will keep developing and improving its technology, intellectual property, and products to fill the enormous holes he sees in the industry.
With the help of the transport marketplace, the company’s clients will be able to ask for more delivery cars when their own fleets aren’t enough.
They will be able to request more vehicles using our platform, and we will be able to link them to new providers swiftly.
“Our technology keeps track of factors like usage, allowing us to pair distributors with the finest suppliers.” This is intriguing because, unlike other marketplaces, Amazon allows you to buy a truck rather than rent it to a customer for a single service. Due to our capacity to utilize loads, a truck might carry many loads.
The business is also in discussions with lenders about offering lease financing to clients so they can increase the size of their fleets.
“We want to do it in a really organized way, and our technology is a terrific basis for us to develop other things on top of,” the company says.