Always on the move, and with lofty goals

Although competition in the Chinese mainland’s internet market is the fieriest, the logistics-tech sector is a budding and promising sector, says Chow Shing-yuk, founder and chief executive officer of Hong Kong-based on-demand logistics startup Lalamove.

The leading same-day delivery and logistics provider recently raised $100 million for its Series C funding round led by Shunwei Capital and other investors, including Xiang He Capital and MindWorks Ventures.

According to Chow, the company’s funding exercise has a two-fold purpose — to expand to more cities, especially in Southeast Asia, and East and South Asian markets, such as South Korea and Sri Lanka, and deepen the utilization of existing services in mainland cities rather than covering more of them.

He says Lalamove would like to boost its current staff strength of about 1,600 by another 100, and work on improving its products, such as real-time ordering targeting small businesses to ensure that its vehicles can respond in 10 seconds and arrive in five minutes upon demand.

According to Chow, the company’s operations already cover the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand, having launched services in Vietnam in early October.

Raised in a poor family, Chow was the first Hong Kong student to secure straight “A”s in public examinations in the New Territories and got admitted to the University of California, Los Angeles, and Stanford University majoring in science and economics. Upon graduation, he joined global management consulting firm Bain & Company where he stayed for almost three years.

Giving up the career in the consulting firm, he chose to be a professional poker player and won more than HK$30 million over a span of seven years from 2002 to 2010, which provided the funds for him to get startups off the ground. Meanwhile, he also founded Lattice Investment Partners from 2005 to 2013 and has been on the Board of Advisors of Compass Offices since 2012.

In October 2013, at the age of 36, Chow founded EasyVan, the predecessor of Lalamove. He said one big change that had occurred during his generation was the advent of the internet, but he was 15 years’ late taking the plunge in the sector as the internet had already emerged in 1999. He then came up with the idea of transforming the call center from offline to online through internet tools.

In the early stage of its operations, Lalamove had experienced difficulties. Chow recalls the company being hit by a shortage of funds after paying out its staff their first pay checks. MindWorks Ventures was the first venture capital enterprise to approach Lalamove and invested in it.

“If the entire race is 100 meters, we’ve now just covered 1 meter,” admits Chow. “Our goal is to offer fast and simple delivery services, and we want Lalamove to be a symbol of ondemand logistics.”

Chow notes that United Parcel Service — the world’s largest package delivery company and a provider of supply chain management solutions — had already reached a certain market size even without internet, so he’s is confident that with the power of internet, the on-demand logistics industry holds great promise and they’ve just started.

Casting a vote of confidence in the mainland’s logistics business, Chow says the logistics sector covers only 15 percent of the national GDP at present and efficiency is further needed.

Lalamove’s business on the mainland accounts for 80 percent of its overall business, covering more than 100 cities and accounting for some 70 percent of the mainland economy, with 15 million users and supported by 2 million drivers.

Lalamove is among the two key players in the industry on the mainland, the other being 58 Suyun — the freight business unit of China’s largest online marketplace serving local merchants and consumers. 58 Suyun merged with Hong Kong-based GoGoVan in August this year.

Referring to other competitors in the trade, Chow says: “The focus is always on the user”, elaborating that they focus on user experience and aim to ensure that consumers can find a van through their app at the fastest speed. The key to the service is getting good drivers to cooperate in each of the cities.

“The internet is the most

Our goal is to offer fast and simple delivery services, and we want Lalamove to be a symbol of ondemand logistics.” Chow Shing-yuk, founder and CEO of Lalamove

difficult sector to handle in the commercial world and, in the internet sector, the fiercest market is on the mainland.”

Talking about the potential in the development of the sharing economy and startup business in Hong Kong, Chow reckons that startups in Hong Kong must not only focus on the local market as it is relatively small, but should concentrate on expanding to the mainland or Southeast Asian markets.

“A successful business needs markets, funds and talent. You always have to think bigger out of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, whatever works for the local city doesn’t really work for others.”

Chow adds that although Southeast Asian markets may be more complicated than others, they are still worthy of exploring, and the whole process of startups is to solve problems.

He notes that, in recent years, more and more local young people have launched startups due to support from the government and more technology companies coming into the market.