Ecom Express, India’s leading technology enabled end-to-end logistics solutions provider to the e-commerce industry, has announced a strategic investment worth of USD 11 million in Bangladesh’s largest third-party e-commerce logistics (3PL) firm Paperfly. Through this investment, Ecom Express is entering Bangladesh marking its maiden venture outside India.
After having covered the length and breadth of the country reaching over 1.2 billion people daily, Ecom Express is now looking at expanding into adjacent countries, starting with Bangladesh.
With more than 167 million inhabitants and over 90 million internet users, the e-commerce industry in Bangladesh is emerging and has become one of the fastest-growing markets in the region. The increasing per-capita disposable income has fueled higher consumption from expanding middle classes. Moreover, greater mobile and internet penetration has led consumers to increasingly shop online and expect shorter delivery times.
T.A. Krishnan, CEO and Co-Founder, Ecom Express says, “We see a lot of growth opportunities in adjacent markets and the current investment is one of the many things in the pipeline. We looked at multiple aspects before identifying Bangladesh for our first international venture. The market draws parallel with India in terms of growth and demography and we want to leverage our experience and domain expertise to enable high scalability growth and build a strategic backbone of e-commerce logistics in Bangladesh. Paperfly is quite similar to Ecom Express in its operations and we admire what the company has accomplished in the Bangladesh market. We look forward to enabling Paperfly to unlock new avenues for enhanced third-party logistics and home delivery in the country.”
Founded in 2016 by Shahriar Hasan, Md. Razibul Islam, Rahath Ahmed and Shamsuddin Ahmed, Paperfly is the first homegrown technology-enabled logistics company in Bangladesh and has been able to scale up to the size that it is today in a very short span of time. Covering all 64 districts, the company has the widest delivery network in the country and enables e-commerce platforms with full-fledged delivery and logistics offering and services including last mile delivery, cash on delivery solutions and returns management. The fast growth of Paperfly is a testament to the solid experience and extensive industry expertise of its management team.
The investments will be used by Paperfly towards the transformation of logistics through intelligence-driven automation and data sciences that would enable the company to meet the fast-growing demand for quality e-commerce logistics services in Bangladesh. It will further accelerate the company’s implementation of advanced supply chain and logistics processes, agile solutions in delivery and warehouse management, and other operational facets in the logistics and supply chain.