Hong Kong’s Gogovan grabs $10M investment from Renren for China expansion

Hong Kong smart logistics startup Gogovan may be just a year old (more or less), but it moves fast. After starting in Hong Kong, the company is now plying its services in Singapore and Taipei and eyeing expansion to Seoul, Melbourne and Sydney before the end of the year. But that’s just the beginning. Gogovan plans to expand to China, Japan, and Southeast Asia in 2015, and it has just announced a US$10 million investment from Chinese social networking giant Renren that will help facilitate those plans.

Renren’s US$10 million investment has given the company a roughly 10 percent stake in Gogovan, according to The Wall Street Journal. That puts Gogovan’s current valuation somewhere in the area of US$100 million.

Gogovan has been called “Uber for logistics”; its app makes it easy for people or companies that need vans to book them on the fly. And while the idea for the company was born out of the founders’ frustration at Hong Kong’s inefficient white van call center system, an expansion into China and other parts of Asia has seemed inevitable since some of the same market opportunities exist there. Gogovan execuitive chairman Gabriel Fong has said that the company was waiting to find the right China partner. In Renren, it seems, Gogovan has found just that.

In fact, for Gogovan, this investment is not about the money. The company wrapped up a US$6.5 million round just a few months ago, and doesn’t actually need additional money in the bank. What it needs is a China partner, and it believes Renren’s platform expertise and local connections make it the perfect pick for expanding into the Middle Kingdom. The company’s size was also appealing. Gogovan’s Gabriel Fong told Tech in Asia, “We were also not actively looking for a partner that is too large for us as we wanted their mindshare.”

The Renren partnership could even potentially help facilitate Gogovan’s expansion into Japan, as Softbank is a major Renren shareholder. Whether or not Softbank will be interested in helping Gogovan remains to be seen, though; the Japanese company bought a stake in a similar Korean company earlier this year and may be hesitant to help a potential future competitor.

UPDATE: Updated 11/19 with some information from Gogovan’s Gabriel Fong.