Pathao, the Dhaka-based fast growing logistics + ride-hailing startup, is eyeing expansion beyond Bangladesh. The ride-hailing company has always aspired to be more. It has since expanded to food delivery, car-hailing, payment, and continues to look for opportunities to explore. Now, the company is eyeing to expand to Nepal. In a social media post, it has already announced that it will soon be launching in Nepal market. Pathao has also been actively hiring in Nepal. It has been using online job vacancy platforms like Merojob to find potential employees for their Nepal operation, said a report from Nepal based Tech news site techlekh.com.
Pathao has confirmed to FS that is has been working on launching in Nepal as part of its international expansion. In response to an email from Future Startup, Pathao CEO Husain M Elius said, "Pathao has built a platform that enables employment for thousands of drivers and a product that millions of customers use in Bangladesh. We are excited to take our Pathao platform internationally - starting with Nepal. We have already started to onboard riders in Nepal and we plan to launch in the next few weeks. The Pathao team is inspired to be #MovingNepal and work closely with the local ecosystem"
Nepali has already several ride-hailing players like Tootle, Sarathi, and Eddy Cab offering both bike-hailing and cab-hailing.
Founded in 2015 by Hussain Elius, Shifat Adnan, and Fahad, Pathao started out as a consumer-facing on-demand delivery business. It later pivoted to e-commerce delivery where it quickly found a business and became a leading player within a short period of time. “On-demand delivery was a challenging space to operate because of poor market demand and huge resource requirement, so we shifted our focus to ecommerce last October 2015,” told Hussain M. Elius to Future Startup in a 2016 interview. Today, Pathao logistics is one of the biggest players in eCommerce delivery in Bangladesh.
In 2016, it made its foray into ride-hailing transportation space with Pathao Rides. The idea was to use the same fleet to carry passengers in the peak-office hours and maintain eCommerce delivery during the off-peak hours. It became an instant hit in the market. The company now claims to serve ‘thousands of’ daily rides and continues to receive rave reviews from its users.
In November 2017, Indonesian ride-hailing unicorn Go-Jek reportedly co-invested “around US$2 million” in Pathao as part of its Series A funding. The startup raised another round of investment at a valuation of over $100 million in April this year.
Pathao now aims to become a platform, ‘one app for all of your needs’. “Vision-wise, the ambition is we are going to allow people to build on a platform with millions of users, where you don’t have to worry about logistics and payments. You don’t have to worry about data. It’s all taken care of. You just come in and build and readily get and serve millions of users,” told Hussain M. Elius to Future Startup in a recent interview.”
Update on Sept 10: This story has been updated with a uote from Hussain M Elius of Pathao.
