FREIGHTIFY SECURES $12 MILLION AS IT DEMOCRATISES ACCESS TO BEST PRICES FOR FREIGHT FORWARDERS

Freightify has announced a USD $12 million Series A funding round to save 70% of the time spent on manual tasks while halving the operational costs to do business for them.

The round was led by Sequoia Capital India & Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia with participation from Trail Mix Ventures and Alteria Capital. The round also includes returning investors Nordic Eye Venture Capital and Motion Ventures. Founded in 2016, Freightify initially started as a marketplace for freight forwarders to conveniently search, book and track freight. This experience in automating sea freight paved the way to a software-as-aservice (SaaS) pivot. Freightify’s platform, with rate management and quoting capabilities, is able to empower freight forwarders to procure, manage and quote freight prices (including all possible ancillary charges) in less than two minutes.

Freightify is navigating a unique approach in the industry, away from a marketplace model that offers a one-to-many solution, and more of an all- encompassing personalised platform that freight forwards can license as a white label solution for their websites offering an unparalleled engagement opportunity for their customers.

Over 200 freight forwarding companies providing global logistics services (across 45 countries) use Freightify to digitise their operations. These customers have reported halving the cost and a substantial time saving in doing business. Some customers deploy a Freightify white label platform and have reported an increase in retained business and an increase in revenue by 20%.

“We set up Freightify to remove the heavy lifting of manually providing quotations, accepting email/telephonic bookings, managing documentation, coordinating and tracking shipments. Freightify solves these challenges by giving them and their customers a live pricing platform like the ones used by travellers to compare airfares, showing real-time rates on a single screen. Freight forwarders are like the travel agents for global trade, however, air travel is not as complicated as global trade. Supply chains require experts to manage cargo throughout the entire lifecycle and freight forwarders play a vital role in greasing the wheels,” Raghavendra Viswanathan, CEO of Freightify, said.

Freightify’s new funding round will help launch new functionalities and deliver on a strong and expanded product roadmap, expand the sales team globally, especially in North America, build channel partnerships, and increase their brand awareness globally as they expand into new geographies and segments.

“The global freight forwarding industry, with a market cap of over $300 billion, has been never more ripe for disruption and adoption of technology...we are truly excited to be partnering with the passionate team at Freightify, which provides white labelled rate automation solutions that is truly unique and can bring in a lot more visibility to the ever changing dynamic freight rates,” Harshjit Sethi, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India, added.

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FourKites launches data connector to help businesses maximise the power of supply chain data

FOURKITES has announced the launch of Data Connector, an offering that allows customers to automatically access and leverage FourKites data directly within their existing business intelligence tool.

“Data Connector has enabled our company to integrate additional data points into internal reporting for better traceability,” Kaitlyn DeSpiegler, Logistics Manager – Strategic Projects, 3M, said. “This, in turn, has helped us gain insight into our export process as it relates to delays and handoffs. The data feeds into a larger end-to-end view that our export and import teams use to track goods processing through 3PL warehouses and the exporting country.”

“Business leaders are realising that trusted, highquality supply chain data goes far beyond trucks and trains; it is relevant to all corners of the enterprise. The more accessible that data is across their organisation, the more they can optimise their operations,” Priya Rajagopalan, Chief Product Officer of FourKites, said.”