Pakistani startup PostEx, a provider of courier and financing services to online merchants, acquired logistics company Call Courier in a deal that makes it the nation’s largest e-commerce delivery firm, according to its founder.
(Bloomberg) — Pakistani startup PostEx, a provider of courier and financing services to online merchants, acquired logistics company Call Courier in a deal that makes it the nation’s largest e-commerce delivery firm, according to its founder.
The combined entity will be handling about 50,000 orders a day, a scale that makes it profitable, founder Muhammad Omer Khan said without disclosing a value for the deal. The acquisition gives PostEx delivery operations in 500 Pakistani cities, compared with its previous base that consisted of just the three main ones.
“While others are going on the backfoot and slowing down, we plan to become even more aggressive,” Khan, who is PostEx’s chief executive officer, said in an interview in the southern city of Karachi.
Pakistan, whose population of about 230 million makes it the world’s fifth-largest nation, is attracting interest from global investors as its online businesses gain users. The country’s startups raised more than $350 million in 2021, a record, with several global venture funds investing for the first time. PostEx raised $8.6 million last year in one of Pakistan’s largest early-stage funding rounds.
More than 90% of e-commerce deliveries in the South Asian nation are paid for in cash, resulting in long delays before the merchants receive the proceeds for the sale. PostEx offers these businesses upfront payments before deliveries are made, giving them liquidity. The financing services help PostEx stand out from the region’s other delivery companies, Khan said.
Pakistan’s e-commerce industry has lured the most investment in the recent funding rush. The majority of the population still hasn’t switched to online shopping, providing room for the sector to grow and transactions to reach $10 billion before 2025 from about $6 billion now, Khan estimates.
Khan started PostEx in 2019 with a friend, going door-to-door to small shops to convince them to allow the company to handle their deliveries. The acquisition more than triples its number of employees to 2,400.
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