Israeli company Freightos raises more than $44m in funding

Today, more than 50% of the world's top 50 freight companies use Freightos' logistics software.

By EYTAN HALON
Updated: SEPTEMBER 17, 2018 13:54
Freight containers are seen on a freight container ship as a worker looks on at DP World, Southampton Docks, in Southampton, Britain, March 27, 2017 (photo credit: REUTERS/EDDIE KEOGH)
Freight containers are seen on a freight container ship as a worker looks on at DP World, Southampton Docks, in Southampton, Britain, March 27, 2017
(photo credit: REUTERS/EDDIE KEOGH)
Jerusalem-based freight technology company Freightos has raised $44.4 m. in its latest round of funding led by Singapore Exchange, strengthening its position at the technological forefront of the trillion-dollar shipping industry.
Freightos provides an advanced online freight marketplace, enabling international importers and exporters to instantly compare international shipping costs, with some describing it as the freight equivalent of well-known travel comparison websites Expedia and Kayak.
British-Israeli CEO and Freightos founder Zvi Schreiber, a serial entrepreneur, was inspired to set up the company in November 2011 after previous experiences dealing with the slow nature of shipping logistics, difficulty of comparing prices and the lack of ability to track goods en route to their destination.
Freightos has come a long way since initially selling automated systems for providing shipping quotes. In mid-2016, the Freightos online marketplace was launched, and has quickly grown from a price comparison website to also providing instant booking, online shipment management, tracking and communication with a network of more than 1,200 logistics providers across the world.
Today, more than 50% of the world’s top 50 freight companies use Freightos’s logistics software, with the company powering more than one million instant freight quote requests every month, relying on more than one billion rate data points and patent-pending routing and pricing engines.
The size of the shipping industry provides great potential for the company’s future growth, with more than 750 million shipping containers transported every single year. The global freight market is continuing to expand, primarily driven by e-commerce.
Freightos has already become the leading international freight rate database, with the Freightos Baltic Index providing the world’s most comprehensive and up-to-date container freight index.
“The meteoric growth of the Freightos marketplace and success of our platform for freight rate management and digital sales, shows that importers and exporters are looking for radically better freight services, while carriers and forwarders are eager to deliver by leveraging technology,” said Schreiber.
The goal of the latest round of funding is to scale up Freightos’s marketplace. Originally focusing on freight hubs in China and Southeast Asia, before expanding into the UK and Canadian shipping markets, Freightos will now seek to expand its operations globally.
In 2015, Freightos acquired Barcelona-based company WebCargo, offering similar technological solutions in the field of air freight.
"From small freight forwarders to global carriers, and from niche e-commerce vendors to Fortune 500 retailers and manufacturers, Freightos means transparency, efficiency, and automation for supply chains," Schreiber said.
The current round of funding has been led by Singapore Exchange, an investment holding company located in Singapore, and joined by new and existing investors.
To date, Freightos has raised $94.4 m. in funding, with previous investors including GE Motors and Israeli funds, such as OurCrowd, Aleph and Israel Clean Ventures.
“Freightos is at the forefront of a new wave of solutions for price discovery and digital marketplaces in global freight – an industry at the heart of the global economy,” said Michael Syn, head of derivatives at Singapore Exchange.