Oslo, Norway-based Xeneta, an ocean and air freight rate benchmarking platform and container shipping index, announced that it has raised $28.5M (approx €23.89M) in its Series C round of funding. This fundraise puts the company’s valuation at over $130M (approx €109M).
The round was led by New York-based Lugard Road Capital. In addition, existing investors Creandum and Investinor also participated in this round.
With this development, Lugard Road will join Xeneta’s earlier investors London-based Smedvig Capital, Point Nine Capital, and Alliance Venture, bringing the total raised funding by Xeneta to $49M.
Funds for expansion
The proceeds from this round will be used to scale operations across the company, develop Xeneta’s commercial and technical partner channels, and expand its services into new geographies.
Besides, the company will also invest and build out its in-house data analyst team to provide market insights into the ocean and air freight industry to help guide the rebound of global supply chains.
Pain point of the industry
According to Xeneta, the broken state of the global supply chain has led to further disruptions, as manufacturers are starting to cancel shipments due to low profit margins. Shippers of all sizes are experiencing unreliable transport capacities and incalculable replenishment times, no matter their volume size.
The company claims that while importers and retailers continue to report record lows for their inventory-to-sales ratios, there are no signs of relief with recent surges in customer demand and declines in carrier reliability. As a result, short-term ocean freight rates have reached all-time highs and are projected to remain at elevated levels through the rest of 2021.
However, Doug Friedman, partner at Lugard Road Capital, believes, “Xeneta is addressing a critical and immediate need for better freight rate data insights. We are confident that Xeneta’s intelligent ocean and air freight market data platform will provide immediate actionable insights to an industry currently experiencing historical supply chain disruptions.”
“Changing the way freight is procured”
Founded in 2012 by Patrik Berglund, Xeneta is an ocean and air freight rate benchmarking and market analytics platform that aims to transform the shipping and logistics industry.
The company’s platform provides liner-shipping stakeholders the data they need to understand current and historical market behavior – reporting live on market average and low/high movements for both short and long-term contracts.
And through digitisation and crowdsourced-approach of gathering ocean and air freight rates, Xeneta claims to offer a comprehensive global container pricing index, providing full freight pricing transparency to all stakeholders involved in the $300B international container and air freight trade industry.
Currently, Xeneta’s data comprises over 280 million contracted container and air freight rates and covers over 160,000 global trade routes.
Patrik Berglund, CEO & co-founder of Xeneta, says, “As a result of COVID-19, the Suez Canal fiasco and the current Shenzhen Yantian port congestion, global trade and the supply chain have been severely crippled, presenting a slew of reliability and capacity challenges as well as record-high shipping rates. Yet, despite these global trade challenges, the last year has been a successful one for our company, as it shed light on the industry’s need for transparency in rates to keep the supply chain gears in motion. We’re committed to using this next round of funding to further address the market pain points and provide greater insights for companies navigating these rough waters.”
Some of Xeneta’s clients include General Mills, Volvo, John Deere, Amer Sports, Rockwell Automation, and CEVA Logistics – all looking to gain better market visibility into freight rate pricing factors and minimise the supply chain disruptions.