Today we’re going to talk about a logistics company that started out of a second hand van a decade ago. 

Founded in 2014 by a group of three friends, our guest is e-commerce express logistics company Ninja Van Group. Fast forward to the present, the firm is now a technology enabled logistics organisation backed by marquee investors including GeoPost, Alibaba, and B Capital Group.

Just to give you a sense of the firm’s scale, Ninja Van said it has a 100% coverage across Southeast Asia, with established operations and networks in six key markets. 

It offers logistics and supply chain products and services for nearly two million shippers, with some two million parcels delivered by its team of over 66,000 people daily. 

Ninja Van is a company that we want to look at because the firm had in April 2024 launched a cold chain offering called Ninja Cold, as well as a business-to-business offering Ninja B2B, as part of efforts to diversify beyond e-commerce and search for higher margin businesses. 

The move come as the firm’s latest financial filings for the financial year ended June 2023 revealed a loss of S$326.8 million in 2023  versus a loss of S$250.2 million in 2022. 

So how does the firm assess its latest financial numbers? What does this say about the opportunities and challenges in operating and expanding within the logistics space? 

And how successful has Ninja Cold and Ninja B2B been over half a year after they were launched?
 
On Under the Radar, Money Matters’ finance presenter Chua Tian Tian posed these questions to Lai Chang Wen, CEO, Ninja Van.