SGX leads Series C for Hong Kong's Freightos
The Singapore Exchange (SGX) has led a $44.4 million Series C funding round for Freightos, a Hong Kong-based logistics technology platform that connects carriers with importers and exporters globally.
The company’s flagship product is AcceleRate, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that enables carriers, freight forwarders and shippers to automate pricing and routing. It also operates a marketplace – supported by the world’s largest global database of multimodal freight rates – that generates instant price quotes for freight forwarders and provides online shipment management, tracking and communication services. Freight forwarders pay Freightos a finder’s fee equal to 2% of the overall transaction whenever they generate business through the marketplace.
The general objective is to make international shipping as frictionless as booking a flight online, and SGX’s capital will go towards scaling the platform. Freightos already serves more than 1,200 logistics providers and processes more than one million instant freight quote requests every month. In addition, the company’s global rate database drives the Freightos Baltic Index, a container freight index operated with SGX-owned Baltic Exchange. There are plans to collaborate on other financial instruments.
Freightos was founded by Israeli entrepreneur Zvi Schreiber in 2012. In his previous role as CEO of a company that made electronic power components for LED lights, Schreiber was often frustrated at having to wait four days for a basic price quote from logistics companies. On selling that business to a division of General Electric in 2011, he already had the seed of inspiration for this next venture.
The company raised an equity crowdfunding round in 2012. This was followed by $15 million in Series A funding in 2014 and a $14 million Series B in 2015. The latter round featured existing investors Aleph, Annox Capital, ICV and OurCrowd, as well as MSR Capital and Sadara Ventures. In 2017, Freightos added GE Ventures to the roster as the investor led a $25 million extended Series B round. GE Ventures has re-upped for the Series C alongside ICV and Aleph, among others.
“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. SGX is excited by the potential to develop risk management tools and services and build on Singapore’s unique position in the trade ecosystem, to bridge the physical and financial markets,” Michael Syn, head of derivatives at SGX, said in a statement.
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