Singapore-based freight rate management platform Freightify has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital India and Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia, according to its announcement on Thursday.
The round also saw the participation of Trail Mix Ventures and Alteria Capital as well as repeat investors Nordic Eye Venture Capital and Motion Ventures.
The company is looking to deploy the proceeds to add new functionalities, expand its product roadmap and beef up its global sales team, especially in North America.
It also has plans to build channel partnerships and increase its brand awareness globally.
The firm reportedly raised $2.5 million in seed funding in July 2021. The platform is now used by over 200 freight forwarding companies across 45 countries.
Founded in 2016 by Raghavendran Viswanathan, the startup calls itself the “Shopify for maritime freight” as it provides white-label rate management and e-booking tools for freight forwarders to set up online stores.
Its software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform also provides track-and-trace solutions to let freight forwarders see the live location of vessels.
Freightify is currently post-revenue and its pricing packages are pay-per-use.
According to Viswanathan, the platform’s main competitors are still spreadsheets and “the reluctance of freight forwarders to use technology”. However, he sees that more companies are willing to adopt technology, thanks in part to the drive toward digitalisation wave brought on by the pandemic.
Freightify’s fundraising comes as the global freight forwarding industry, which is valued at over $300 billion, has “never been riper for disruption and the adoption of technology,” notes Harshijit Sethi, managing director at Sequoia Capital India.
“With the lack of structured pricing data that can be retrieved instantly and used across the freight forwarding value chain, we are truly excited to be partnering with the passionate team at Freightify, which provides white-labelled rate automation solutions that are truly unique and can bring in a lot more visibility to the ever-changing dynamic freight rates,” he added.
Other companies in the freight forwarding and logistics tech space that Sequoia Capital has invested in include Singapore-headquartered cross-border platform Janio and Indonesian freight forwarding marketplace Kargo.
Among recent deals in the sector, Singapore-based supply chain tech startup Locad raised $11 million in a Series A round led by Reefknot Investments. In another transaction, Los Angeles and Taipei-based GoFreight raised $23 million in Series A funding, co-led by Flex Capital and Headline, in November 2022.