[ad_1]
The Freightos digital freight marketplace raised nearly $ 45 million in a round of C Series financing to expand its technological and geographical reach and develop financial instruments for container shipping.
The tour was conducted by
Singapore Stock Exchange
Ltd.
S68 -0.68%
, The Singapore Stock Exchange, as part of an effort to make the country a global maritime financial center. In 2016, Singapore Exchange bought $ 103 million worth of the centuries-old London-based Baltic Exchange shipping market. At the beginning of the year, Freightos and Baltic Exchange launched the weekly Freightos Baltic index for sea freight rates in the main shipping routes worldwide.
Freightos, based in Hong Kong, currently has 1,200 logistics companies that use its business-to-business market, which represents about one million quotes per month. With these data, Freightos says it can fuel broader world price indexes than the Shanghai Containerized Freight Freight Index, commonly used to measure prices in the shipping industry.
"It's a matter of strategic relationship," said Zvi Schreiber, Managing Director of Freightos. Freightos plans to collaborate with Singapore Exchange to deliver its daily container shipping index. "The freight will be ready for trade a year or two ago," he said.
The company says its market is gaining ground. The company market works like
Expedia
Inc.
offers almost instant quotes for international freight shipments, with options for maritime and air services. The company said that about half of the latest round of funding would be devoted to research and technological development, the rest supporting efforts to attract more users.
In addition to Singapore Exchange, the last round of financing focused on existing investors GE Ventures, ICV Partners and Aleph Venture Capital. Freightos has collected a total of $ 94.4 million in global guarantees. Mr. Schreiber does not detail the valuation of the company beyond the statement that it is "in nine figures."
Evan Armstrong, a logistics industry analyst, said Freightos had established "a very nice niche without a lot of competitors." Since 2011, investments in digital freight management in the United States have exceeded $ 420 million, according to his firm, Armstrong & Associates.
Schreiber said the technology is helping to transform the transit and shipping operations that have long been done on phone calls and spreadsheets. "You have to be on the phone for three or four days to get these quotes," he said. "As consumers, we've had interfaces like this for 20 years, but in the freight business, it's really a revolution."
Nevertheless, digital booking still accounts for only about 1% of freight reservations in the world, he said.
Write to Erica E. Phillips at [email protected]
Source link
