Dostavista, now rebranded to Borzo, has completed an impressive Series C round, raising $35 million from a bevy of major international investors.
This urban delivery service with Russian roots has been backed by the RDIF, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund (which made an early announcement about the deal in June); Mubadala, its Emirati peer; VNV Global, a major Swedish investment firm which is actively involved in the Russian VC market; and Flashpoint Venture Capital, ex-Buran Capital, which usually invests in CEE, Finland and Israel.
The fresh funding will help the company “strengthen its position on the international market” and “develop new products” under the new Borzo brand.
“With the new round closed we continue to move toward our goal of becoming one of the top courier delivery companies in every market we operate in,” said Borzo founder Mike Alexandrovski in a corporate statement. “To achieve this goal we believe it’s important to ensure operational synchronicity and integrity of the company’s brand perception, and that’s why we rebranded it to Borzo.”
Founded in 2012, Borzo is among the international leaders in its field. Relying on 2.5 million independent couriers, the company currently operates in 10 emerging countries — Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and Vietnam.
“Emerging markets are still in a position to make an early technological leap to the world of same-day delivery, making traditional next-day deliveries obsolete,” the Borzo press service explained in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
Behind-the-scene algorithms
The company claims 2 million active customers (three quarters of which are SMEs), which can offer their clients a same-day delivery service “via any route, any transport, any weight or size, for a competitive price.”
Borzo says it uses “highly advanced algorithms to enable affordable, fast, precise delivery for the mass market.” These algorithms “optimize numerous parallel deliveries taking into account the geographical routes, packages’ contents, couriers and many others to ensure the feasibility of the same-day delivery.”
With three million orders processed per month, the company generates an annual gross revenue runrate “approaching $150 million.”
Borzo already raised equity funding several times in the past: $800,000 in 2016, $2.25 million in 2017, $2 million in 2018, and as much as $15 million in 2019, as reported by East-West Digital News. Among the investors in these previous rounds was FJ Labs, the investment firm of Western business angels Fabrice Grinda and Jose Marin.
