In midst of logistics digitisation wave, SHIPSTA ships in $10 million to navigate global expansion

The pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine and soaring global fuel prices have thrown the supply chains into a state of chaos. As supply chain innovation becomes one of the greatest concerns for businesses in today’s times, VCs have opened their wallets for startups in the segment.

Transforming the shipping and freight industry, several startups have come to the rescue and how! While Berlin-based Forto  raised a mammoth funding of $250 million and almost doubled its valuation to $2.1 billion in eight months to become a unicorn and Paris-based fine art shipping company Convelio raised €30 million funding this month, London’s real-time overview of supply chain software provider Zencargo raised £30 million last year.

Now, entering the fray is Luxembourg and Germany-based digital platform SHIPSTA. The freight sourcing and procurement player has raised a $10 million funding to accelerate its global expansion. The round was led by Dubai-based Tricap Investments, with participation from Chris Kirchner, co-founder and CEO of shipping and logistics process automation company Slync.io. Existing investors also took part in the round.

According to a new Gartner report, the heavy reliance on manual processes in procurement is shifting to businesses now seeking tools that help them make better decisions, using data and advanced analytics.

Founded in 2019 by Christian Wilhelm, Stefan Maratzki and Oliver Ritzmann, the startup automates all these tasks and bring the power of digitisation and freight data to service high-performing procurement teams. SHIPSTA connects shippers and carriers, providing data centricity, full visibility into their supply chain and controlling transportation costs.

David Waroquier, CEO, SHIPSTA said: “Enterprises now recognise that they need to be far more agile and responsive to these pressures. The ongoing logistics disruptions have in effect sparked a huge wave of digitalisation in logistics. Since we launched in 2019, we already have over 100 enterprise clients, a third of which are Fortune 500 companies.”