Munich’s supply chain collaboration platform TradeLink nets €12 million

Munich-based supply chain collaboration platform TradeLink has raised €12 million in funding. The Series A round was led by global software investor Insight Partners with participation from existing investors Point Nine and Fly Ventures and angel investors, including Alexander Doll (former CFO of Deutsche Bahn), David Nothacker (CEO of Sennder), Alex Hersham (CEO of Zencargo), and Stephan Kniewasser (former CEO of Transporeon, TeamViewer).

The funding will allow the company to enhance the functionalities of its SaaS platform and scale marketing and sales activities to collaborate in logistics and supply chains.

With delivery bottlenecks, missing materials, rising logistics costs, lack of shipment transparency, and overworked warehouse employees – the supply chain woes seem to be never ending. The process breakdowns have cost players throughout the value chain billions of dollars.

This is where TradeLink steps in. It is enabling users to move away from manual spreadsheets and email to simplified and automated exchanges between all involved parties in the supply chain. It connects all delivery partners - forwarders, suppliers, shippers, and warehouse operators - with a few clicks and automates the alignment of digital papers, expected delivery time, load information, and communication to improve business results for all participants in the supply chain.

One of the segments which garnered major attention and VC money during the pandemic were warehousing startups. Hamburg's supply chain platform Procuros secured $9 million and SHIPSTA shipped in $10 million to navigate global expansion recently.

So, what’s the German startup’s way forward? While the initial wedge into customers is around efficient coordination of warehouse deliveries, the long-term goal is to create an end-to-end digital collaboration platform for process orchestrations and document management between shippers, warehouses, and carriers.

"Logistics and warehouse operations professionals want a solution that fits intuitively, quickly, and pragmatically into their everyday work," said CEO and co-founder Frederic Krahforst.

“TradeLink has created a digital solution that identifies inefficiencies and process breakdowns in supply chains, saving customers time and money along the way. With its intuitive workflow tooling and analytics targeted at warehouse operators, it solves a critical communications gap between buyers and other supply chain stakeholders,” said Michael Shephard, vice president at Insight Partners.