The logistics tech start-up Portcast has raised US$3.2 million Pre-Series A financing to make transports profitable with Artificial Intelligence (AI) – driven visibility.
The Singapore-based company predicts the estimated time of arrivals (ETA) of more than 90% of ships globally and forecasts daily the demand for over 30,000 trade routes, both in air and sea, as well as 300,000 shipment events through an intuitive software as a service (SaaS) platform and application programming interfaces (APIs).
Therefore, freight forwarders and manufacturers across the world have the ability to achieve real-time visibility, reduce operational costs and improve customer experience, while also improving profit margins, according to Portcast’s statement.
The new financing is led by Newtown Partners, via the Imperial Venture Fund, while, among others, Wavemaker Partners, TMV and Innoport, who join existing investors SGInnovate participate in the funding.
The capital will go towards international expansion, doubling the team size and product enhancement, in particular, moving from predictive to prescriptive AI and launching new product features such as order-level visibility and scenario planning.
“Global supply chains are under extreme pressure and this has led to ridiculously high transportation costs which are being transferred to the end consumer yet service reliability remains low,” explained CEO and Co-Founder of Portcast, Nidhi Gupta, who added that “companies with predictive visibility on cargo movements have a significantly higher preparedness to downstream planning and customer service, and we have already seen the impact of this with reductions in overall port fees by 20% and manual work by 80% for our customers.”
Furthermore, Managing Partner at Newtown Partners, Llew Claasen pointed out that Portcast has proven its technology not just in the long-haul routes, but also in multi-port voyages and emerging economies, which are harder to predict.
Portcast’s technology will help manufacturers and freight forwarders take advantage of the data needed for procurement optimisation, pricing and customer service enhancement, in order to improve delivery times and, ultimately, their own competitiveness, according to former CEO of DHL Global Forwarding, Freight and Chairman of Portcast, Roger Crook.
Meanwhile, the global research and advisory company Gartner estimates that 50% of product-centric supply chains will invest in real-time transportation visibility platforms by 2023 and this is where the next features of Portcast are being developed.
