Marseille-based Searoutes, a startup that helps shippers reduce the carbon footprint of their transport, announced that it has raised €1.3M in a fresh round of funding.
In August 2021, the startup received a grant of €1.1M from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) financed by the European Commission. Searoutes’ has now raised total funding of €2.4M.
Investors in this round
The current round was led by WSB Beteiligungs, the venture capital firm founded by Wolf Scheder-Bieschin.
According to Bieschin, “Searoutes services bridge the gap between current market solutions and a need to tackle climate change issues facing the supply chain and maritime industries. I’m impressed by the technology and R&D in place at Searoutes for developing powerful complex algorithms to analyse and process data. This offers a significant advantage for everyone involved in the industry.”
The round also includes funding from several investors with expertise in logistics and freight transport, including OHB venture Capital, the venture capital arm of the OHB Group, Team ABC venture, and CMA CGM, a French container transportation and shipping company. In addition, angel investors such as Thomas Sørbø, founder of the leading ocean freight rate benchmarking and market intelligence platform Xeneta, also participated in this round.
Building a greener supply chain
According to Searoutes, in the current scenario, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport account for up to 10 per cent of shippers’ total GHG emissions. This is compounded by the fact that calculating emissions in the logistics sector is a laborious task and prone to poor quality data. This is where Searoutes look to bridge the gap.
The startup has designed an eco-calculator to compute the carbon footprint of a container along its journey.
Incubated and accelerated by ZEBOX, the international incubator and accelerator founded by the CMA CGM Group, the startup already has 60 key accounts including Roquette, a global leader in plant-based ingredients for food, nutrition and health markets, and Ceva Logistics, a global logistics and supply chain company. The company is rapidly adding new customers.
About Searoutes
Founded in 2019 by Dr. Pierre Garreau and Carsten Bullemer, Searoutes specialises in innovative digital solutions for the sea, air, and logistics sector. The company claims to provide the first distance calculation service that uses historical ship data collected from AIS signals.
Searoutes has developed algorithms in collaboration with LIS – QARMA at the University of Aix-Marseille, that provides the maritime and logistics industry with real-time routes and a CO2 emissions calculator to help shippers find ways to reduce their emissions.
The company claims that its technology can process and transform extensive datasets of freight information including historical ship positions, satellite data, engine specifications, schedule information, weather data, etc., into meaningful information.
For instance, a shipper can reduce their GHG emissions by 30 per cent when making purchasing decisions by choosing newer, larger, and slower fleets, and by up to 60 per cent by choosing the right combination of ports and mode of transport when planning a door-to-door route.
Capital utilisation
With an aim to become the standard in GHG transparency for freight transport, Searoutes will accelerate the deployment of the solution to shippers and freight forwarders as well as other related technology platforms.
The company is also continuing to invest in research in partnership with AI laboratories to optimise the door-to-door loading-unloading cycle.
Speaking on the development, Dr. Pierre Garreau says, “Shippers have to deal with purchasing and managing logistics throughout the entire supply chain, not just the ocean piece. We need to help them shape better procurement strategies. For instance by choosing greener modes of transport, or more appropriate port of loading or discharge. Searoutes’ vision is to give more visibility to green carriers, and enable shippers to select them more proactively.”