Toyota Tsusho carried on its parent company's partnership with Sendy by taking part in the courier services provider's latest round.
Toyota Tsusho Corporation, the trading arm of automotive manufacturer Toyota, has contributed to a $20m series B round for Kenya-based on-demand delivery service Sendy, TechCrunch reported today.
Venture capital fund Atlantica Ventures led the round, which boosted the company’s total funding to more than $27m since it was founded in 2015.
Sendy’s service allows businesses to deliver products door to door through a network of drivers that get allocated jobs through the company’s platform. It also offers software helps organisations optimise their own logistics processes.
The company takes a percentage of each transaction leveraged through its app and will put the series B proceeds toward technology development and increasing headcount.
The deal comes after Sendy formed a partnership with two Toyota entities – Tsusho Capital and Hino Kenya, Toyota Kenya’s commercial vehicle division – in August 2019 to lease trucks to its drivers.
Telecommunications firm Safaricom supplied an undisclosed amount of funding for Sendy in 2015 through its Spark Fund, before unnamed investors added $3m two years later.
The company closed a $2m series A round in early 2018 that was led by impact investment firm DOB Equity and backed by CFAO Automotive, an African distribution subsidiary of Toyota. It received a further $2m from another impact investment firm, Goodwell Investments, in October 2019.