Yolda keeps on trucking with $5 million bridge round

Istanbul’s freight tech startup Yolda has pulled into the petrol station to tank up with a $5 million bridge round. Since raising $1.9 million in a seed round back in June of this year, the logistics company has posted some impressive numbers, most notably, consistent monthly growth over 25%. Having seemingly perfected its offer domestically, the Turkish startup is now eyeballing Germany, with the majority of the new funding allocated to this market entry. Since its inception in April of 2020, Yolda has brought home $8 million in funding, not to mention the completion of 8 thousand trips and over 30 thousand shipments.

Now logistics operations and optimisations aren’t really anything new, but where Yolda sets itself apart from competitors is through a rather simple, yet effective modus operandi: “less than truckload” shipments. What this translates into is that Yolda coordinates freight from multiple shippers and maximises the available cargo space on each hauler, resulting in reduced costs across the board, and keeping more trucks off the road and carbon out of the air.

“We will continue to invest in our technology following this bridge round. Our clearly defined technology roadmap focuses on enhancements for our suppliers including location-based services, improved algorithmic load/vehicle matching and dynamic pricing developments for efficiency purposes. We will continue to pursue our vision of becoming a data and product-oriented company abroad as well,” commented co-founder and CTO C. Murad Özsert.

Yolda’s bridge round was provided by previous investors including Speedinvest, Collective Spark, and various angel investors. While not specifically mentioned in the bridge funding, a sampling of Yolda’s prior angel investors includes Marcus Mosen, Stefan Kalteis, and Runtastic co-founder Florian Gschwandtner.