An on-demand delivery startup based in Malaysia, has raised a Pre-Series A round of $1.01 million. Founded in 2016, Zoom, is a delivery focused company which provides startups and small businesses with a platform to assist them in last-mile delivery. The platform is available via web or a mobile app.

“Zoom was created to help SME businesses with their logistics,” Co-founder of Zoom, Jeevan Kumar told Digital News Asia. “Traditional delivery agents are just not conditioned to do on-demand deliveries for them; they don’t have the effective mechanisms. Therefore, it becomes difficult and expensive for startups to use the current delivery options available in the market, due to their usually small basket sizes and scale issues.”

The Pre-Series A round saw participation from Cana Asia Limited, Spiral Ventures Pte Ltd, and Cradle Fund Sdn. Bhd., with Gobi Partners leading the round. The venture capital firm has previously invested in an e-commerce startup, GogoVan which is based in Hong Kong. The investment was made through the Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund and ASEAN’s Deliveree.

“The traditional delivery space is ripe for disruption as consumers continue to shift to on-demand services, which require the use of technology that can optimize deliveries in real-time,” Managing Partner at Gobi Partners, Kay-Mok Ku said. “Zoom’s platform is precisely the solution that enables these providers to scale and it is one of the key reasons they won the Startup of the Year Award.”

The delivery startup was founded in 2016 by Jeevan Kumar, Mohamad Hafiz and Sean Lee. Their platform has over 200 regular users, 80 regular delivery riders, and 300 delivery drivers who are on-call. The company plans to use the funds raised in the round for national expansion plans, specifically into Penang and Johor Bahru.

“By providing an in-house tech platform that connects partners, Zoom HQ and Zoomers,” Lee said. “Partners get a logistics enabler system that manages orders; we at Zoom HQ have a Control Panel system that monitors and tracks all orders; and our Zoomers have a mobile app that receives tasks that have to be completed.”

Recently, the startup won the ASEAN Rice Bowl Startup Award for 2017 Startup of the Year. After its national expansion, the company plans to look into foreign markets in the following year, specifically at Indonesia and Thailand.

(Picture courtesy: https://ricebowlawards.com/)