Last-mile logistics platform vendor DispatchTrack is poised to accelerate its software innovation and enlist customers in new sectors and geographies after receiving a whopping $144 million venture capital investment today, positioning the firm to develop new products, expand its global customer footprint, and address additional delivery use cases, the company said.

The round was led by Spectrum Equity, which calls itself a global growth equity firm that specializes in partnering with software, internet, and information services businesses. The firm’s previous investments include Ancestry, GoodRx, Grubhub, and SurveyMonkey. In conjunction with the transaction, Spectrum’s Vic Parker, managing director, and Adam Gassin, vice president, will join DispatchTrack's board of directors.

Founded in 2010, San Jose, California-based DispatchTrack provides end-to-end visibility and real-time coordination across online and physical storefronts, warehouses, drivers, and end customers. The company says that combination enables businesses to provide the seamless last-mile delivery experiences that consumers have grown to expect in the era of amazon.com inc. 

Specifically, the firm provides an array of products, including: capacity-aware self-scheduling tools, route optimization, automated customer communication and appointment confirmation, dynamic estimated time of arrival (ETA) tracking links, mobile apps for change of custody and proof-of-delivery, billing and settlement for delivery service providers and merchants, and real-time visibility for merchants across their network of carriers and drivers.

Although the 10 year old company is already profitable and counts more than 1,100 customer accounts on its platform, it decided to enlist a financial backer at this stage of growth in order to “expand our reach into the sectors we already serve so well today, address new sectors and use cases, and expand the international customer footprint,” said Satish Natarajan, who co-founded the company along with his wife, Shailu Satish.

As for taking on their first round of funding during the depths of a global recession and health crisis, Natarajan said that current economic turmoil actually helps the company make its case for boosting investment in smooth last-mile operations.

“Covid-19 is actually accelerating last-mile trends that we have been seeing and enabling for years. More companies are recognizing the need to digitize their operations and offer consumers fast, transparent, reliable delivery,” Natarajan said in an email. “Last-mile operations that may have seemed more forward-thinking in the past are quickly becoming a necessity across industries, and platforms like ours make it possible for businesses to act quickly and set the standard.”

In that context, the firm intends to expand the ranks of its customers, which now include retailers, wholesalers, grocers, restaurants, food and beverage distributors, field service businesses, and third-party logistics (3PL) companies, he said.

DispatchTrack’s backers at Spectrum Equity expressed a similar vision for the firm’s growth potential. “Merchants and logistics providers can no longer afford to treat last-mile delivery like a post-purchase operational process or cost center,” Spectrum’s Parker and Gassin wrote in a blog post.

“In the future, we envision a world in which even the most complex deliveries – whether to businesses or consumers – are planned and executed efficiently, tracked and communicated about in real-time, and completed in ways that exceed recipients’ expectations,” Parker and Gassin said. “We see DispatchTrack becoming an industry-leading platform and a central hub of real-time and historical information that extends beyond order and delivery data, offering end-to-end visibility and operational tools for merchants and delivery service providers alike."