SaaS platform Freightify raises $12M in Series A led by Sequoia Capital India

Freight rate management SaaS platform Freightify has raised $12 million in Series A round of funding led by Sequoia Capital India with participation from TMV and Alteria Capital. The round also includes participation from previous investors Nordic Eye Venture Capital and Motion Ventures. The funding round  involves a mixture of equity and debt.

Freightify helps power digital transformation of Freight forwarders through their suite of proprietary products. The company has previously raised $2.5 million in funding, bringing the total to $14.5 million raised so far. 

The company will use the funding to strengthen product offerings and add new functionalities, expand the sales presence globally, build channel partnerships, strengthen marketing to drive growth and increase its brand awareness globally as they expand into new geographies and segments. They will be actively hiring across geographies, especially Chennai. 

Global freight forwarding is a $300B industry that facilitates the movement of cargo from one place to another through a series of manual and legacy processes. Freightify’s SaaS platform allows freight forwarders to procure, manage and quote freight prices (including all possible ancillary charges) in less than 2 minutes.  The platform allows any forwarder to create a digital storefront to serve their customers better. In addition to this, it includes track and trace solutions that help freight forwarders in getting live locations of vessels and automated milestones within seconds.

Over 200 freight forwarding companies providing global logistics services (across 45 countries) use Freightify to digitize their business. These customers have reported reducing processing time by more than 70% and substantial cost savings in doing business. Some customers deploy a Freightify white-label platform and have reported an increase in win ratio by more than 20% and a very noticeable increase in retained business. This success has seen revenues at Freightify triple in the last year as they have attracted large numbers of the top 100 freight forwarders around the world. 

Freightify was founded in 2016 by Raghavendran Viswanathan who comes with rich experience in working in logistics, supply chain and freight management with companies including DHL and Panalpina. Headquartered in Singapore with a strong development team in Chennai, 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 for a SaaS pivot. 

The company’s management and senior staff come from backgrounds including SaaS startups like Freshworks and GoFrugal, logistics tech startups like Fourkites and Trimble, shipping lines like Maersk and MSC, Large forwarders and logistics companies like CON-LINQ ApS, Dachser Denmark and Wiz as well as Big 4 consulting firms like BCG.

Raghavendran Viswanathan, CEO of Freightify, commented, “Our mission is to democratize technology for freight forwarders.  We solve their challenges through our comprehensive SaaS platform giving them and their customers a live pricing platform like the ones used by travelers to compare airfares, showing real-time rates on a single screen.  We have a highly skilled product and engineering team that can deliver on a strong product roadmap and salespeople on the field with deep experience in the freight industry. We are building out a strong marketing function that can drive growth as we expand to geographies across the globe.”

Mayank Porwal, VP, Sequoia India, added, “The freight forwarding industry is a cornerstone of the global trade economy and despite the massive size, much of the industry remains constrained by manual processes and runs on paper, excel sheets and phone calls. Freightify, a vertical SaaS platform, is solving this problem by helping freight forwarders automate rate management and make every day operational workflows fast and efficient so that they can focus on serving their customers and growing their business. We are glad to be a part of this journey with Raghav and the team at Freightify.” 

Existing investor at Freightify, Nordic Eye’s Investment Partner and Manager, Ib Drachmann said, “We have been impressed by the common vision of the company to democratize technology for the freight forwarding ecosystem. We are happy to see the scale at which Freightify has been growing, adding new logos globally and strengthening their product capabilities. Hence, we are doubling down on backing Freightify.” 

Freightify has been expanding rapidly across Europe, Australia and key regions in Asia Pacific, and are currently expanding in North America.