A majority of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Southeast Asia consider logistics as an operational pain point, according to a study conducted by Kantar. In the Philippines, where SMEs make up the vast majority of businesses, logistics remains a top concern.
Shipmates, a Philippine-based shipping platform backed by Y Combinator, wants to address this pain point with a tool that seeks to make the shipping process easier and faster for small businesses online and offline.
And investors are betting on the company to help improve the country’s shipping infrastructure.
The startup announced that it raised $2.2 million, about P126 million, in a Seed funding round backed by Wavemaker Partners, Cathexis Ventures, Taurus Ventures, Capital X, Sketchnote Partners, and other prominent investors.
The investment comes a year after the company raised $500,000 from Y Combinator, making it the 8th startup from the Philippines to be accepted in the Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator, joining the likes of Paymongo, Kalibrr, NextPay, and MadEats.
“When talking to online sellers, their biggest pain point has always been how manual shipping still is in our country. We built Shipmates to automate this, we built Shipmates for them and we are very glad to be joined by our amazing investors in making this vision a reality,” said co-founder and CEO Josh Supan.
The platform, launched by Supan and co-founder CTO David Marquez in 2021, allows online business owners to book standard or multiple orders as well as compare rates between different couriers.
“Instead of shippers booking couriers manually on their phones or physically dropping off packages, their orders feed straight into Shipmates, and they can pick a courier for shipping from there,” Supan added.
With the fresh funding, the startup plans to scale its platform to help both online and offline businesses and shipping companies in the country.
Shipmates got accepted in the Southeast Asian startup accelerator Iterative last year, immediately after it launched its beta in August 2021. It then later joined Y Combinator and received $500,000.