[Funding Alert] Shipsy Raised $6 Mn In Series A Funding Co-led By Surge And Info Edge

Software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based platform Shipsy on Wednesday to have raised $6 million in Series A funding co-led by Sequoia Capital India's rapid-scale up program Surge with its existing investor Info Edge.

The company claims to create a global trade network by bringing all stakeholders of the international logistics ecosystem on a single platform.

"The platform helps shippers reduce freight costs by automating and digitizing freight negotiations, reducing incidental charges, significantly improving shipping turnaround time and minimizing working capital loss for shippers through advanced machine learning models," said Soham Chokshi, co-founder and chief executive officer, Shipsy.

Its approach is to create a strong SaaS workflow management platform that allows network participants to collaborate and work together, reducing process bottlenecks, enhancing efficiency and bringing transparency. The platform boasts of processing 10 per cent of India's trade as well as having the third-party logistics provider (3PL) companies, exporter and retailer along the quality system regulation (QSR) chain amongst their clientele.

"Owing to a substantial increase in the demand for our solution, it was important to leverage the momentum and look out for global investment partners in our next leg of our journey. The money raised will help fuel our growth and enable us to become a market leader, allowing us to continue our aggressive geographical expansion, besides investing in product innovation to keep us ahead of the curve," added Chokshi.

The company's revenues have grown over threefold in the last year and a half, and has substantially increased its customer base by over two-times during the national lockdown period as enterprises look out for a digital solution to manage shipments.

"While we have run our venture profitably, it was critical for us to partner with like-minded global investors in our journey as we venture into larger markets," Chokshi further added.

The company helps enterprises manage their end-to-end logistics across multiple modes and also collaborate more efficiently with their vendors on-boarded on the platform.

"Shipsy's team has a customer-first approach and their software product solves for opacity in the logistics supply chain for enterprises using intuitive workflow automation. The product has seen great adoption from large Indian as well as overseas corporates with significant cost reduction for them. We are excited to continue backing the team as Shipsy is evolving into a global B2B product being built and scaled from India," remarked Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder and executive vice-chairman of Info Edge, while commenting on the fundraise.

Seeing the needs of the market where players needed real-time visibility and reduced costs, the team set out to build a Bloomberg-like platform for supply chain management—creating the largest supply chain network by bringing all participants such as exporters, importers, third-party logistics, shipping lines, banks, insurance companies on a single platform. Recently the company has launched the network module for SME-MSME, onboarding over 5,000 shippers and giving them access to the digital platform featuring competitive vendors to help lower their cost.

Shipsy's investor Info Edge is an internet company with a market cap of around $7 billion and has backed companies such as Zomato, Policybazaar among others as their first institutional investor. It owns and runs internet businesses like Naukri.com, 99acres.com, Jeevansathi.com, iimjobs.com.

More than 120 enterprises of India are among the platform's clients and has raised about INR 10 crore till date. It has customers across Dubai, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Singapore and Malaysia and its network is used by the country's petrochemical, steel, rice and textile exporters.