Istanbul-based logistics startup Yolda raises $1.9 million in seed round, applies sharing economy principles to freight forwarding

Istanbul-based logistics startup Yolda raises $1.9 million in seed round, applies sharing economy principles to freight forwarding

Istanbul’s freight tech startup Yolda has raised $1.9 million in a seed round led by Speedinvest. Collective Spark and prior angel investors including Marcus Mosen, Stefan Kalteis, and Runtastic co-founder Florian Gschwandtner. The funding is slated to be used to expand operations into Europe, double the team size, and increase automation and operational efficiency through the in-house development of new technologies.

Founded in 2020 by C. Murad Özsert and Volkan Özkan, Yolda manages the entire logistics operations for B2B clients. Multiple shipping requests, tracking, and logistics operational performance can all be managed and monitored on the platform.

Now if this form of business sounds remarkably familiar, yes, I’m talking about Berlin’s unicorn Sennder, the key differentiator here is that Yolda’s USP is its specialisation in “less than truckload” shipments. In plain English, what that means is that Yolda can coordinate loads from multiple shippers and maximise the available cargo space on each truck, resulting in reduced costs, and keeping more trucks off the road and carbon in the air.

“More than 30% of all truck movements in Europe are empty. Our LTL focus helps minimise empty or inefficient movements on highways in Turkey and across Europe,” states Yolda CTO, C. Murad Özsert.

Yolda has stress-tested its model within Turkey, having partnered with more than 50 logistics companies and thousands of individual carriers. The startup reports over 400 corporate and SME customers and has performed more than 15,000 shipments to date.

"We are very happy to partner with Volkan and the Yolda team. We've known Volkan since his time at Iyzico, Speedinvest's first investment in Turkey. Yolda's strong growth, driven by their commitment to reduce customer costs and carbon emissions by combining multiple shipments, convinced us it was time to work together once again," comments Speedinvest's Dr. Julian Blessin

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