Inventory Management Leading to Effective Warehousing: A Case of Airlift

Abstract

Airlift is currently renowned for its delivery system where the company seeks to supply its customers with their required groceries, and other supplies and commodities. However, the company began as a decentralized platform of mass transit; it focused mainly on providing public transportation facilities to its customers. The idea sparked when Usman Gul, a native of Lahore city, was visiting his home station, and experienced an uncomfortable congestion due to the inefficient transport system. He was later contacted by a group of people who were intrigued with his idea through various cold emails. They would later form what is now known as the founding team of Airlift. (Paracha, 2019) Initially, the start-up, available only in Lahore and Karachi at the time, allowed its users to sign up to it, and further allowed them to book rides on high-end buses and vans with fixed routes, times and stops. Compared to Uber and Careem, its immediate competition at the time, the start-up was 30-40 percent cheaper, in fact it offered prices as low as PKR 50 for commuting within a city. (Faheem, 2021) The start-up was first funded by Usman Gul himself before he quickly worked to secure seed finances for the company in August 2019. Fatima Gobi Ventures co-led the investment seeding round with Indus Valley Capital and other angel investors. In fact, Tony Xu, the founder, and CEO of DoorDash, where Gul used to previously work, was among the few foreign angel investors supporting Airlift. Furthermore, A co-founder of the Mumbai based ZipGo, Pritesh Gupta, whose business was of a similar nature to Airlift, joined the start-up as an official advisor. At the end of this, the start-up had gathered $2.2 million funds (Release, 2019) . In November 2019, they participated in the country’s largest Series A funding round, and eventually managed to accumulate $12 million funds. The round was led by a US based Venture Capitalist firm; ‘First Round Capital’. The US VC firm was known for its previous investments in Uber, Square, Roblox, Looker, and Notion (Staff, 2019) . Furthermore, in 2021, the start-up held a Series B funding round, through which they managed to raise $85 million, and this round, also the largest held for Pakistan, was co-led by Harry Stebbings of 20VC and Josh Buckley of Buckley Ventures (Singh, 2021) . The start-up’s dedication, simple yet effective solution and plan of action certainly stand out to the organization. They have gathered investment support from US-based Quiet Capital, Fatima Gobi Ventures, True Sight Ventures, ACE Ventures and numerous different financial investors. The organization expects to utilize the funding to extend its organization and scope of operations. Right now, concentrated in big cities like Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi, they are bringing another flood of tech-empowered logistics solutions to their country