Oslo, Norway-based Xeneta, an ocean and air freight rate benchmarking platform and container shipping index, announced on Tuesday, September 13, that it has raised $80M (approximately €80M) in a fresh round of funding at a valuation of $265M (approximately €265.82M).
In June 2021, the company had raised $28.5M (then, approx €23.89M) in a Series C round of funding.
Investors in this round
The current round was led by Apax Digital, the growth equity arm of Apax, a leading global private equity advisory firm. Existing investor, NY-based Lugard Road Capital, also participated in the round.
Mark Beith, Partner at Apax Digital, who has also joined Xeneta’s Board, says, “Buyers and sellers of freight have been flying blind in a complex and opaque market. Xeneta’s dataset and platform provide access to granular real-time information and insight, enabling data-driven freight sales and purchases. This delivers compelling value for their blue-chip customer base – not just in sales or procurement, but also in budgeting and reporting, and increasingly in ESG monitoring.”
The Apax Digital Funds specialises in making growth equity and growth buyout investments in fast-growing consumer internet, enterprise software, and technology-enabled services businesses globally.
Capital utilisation
Xeneta says it will use the funds to accelerate investments in platform development, acquire complementary data sources to strengthen its offering, and scale its global sales and marketing initiatives to new markets.
Xeneta CEO and co-founder, Patrik Berglund, says, “While global trade tries to get back on its feet after a couple of years of uncertainty, it’s clear that the overall logistics industry requires a re-think of how freight is bought and sold. This new funding will help us accelerate the development of our platform and add even more datasets to enrich our expert industry analyses to further drive transparency in the market.”
Data-driven way to buy and sell freight
According to Xeneta, supply and demand in the market are unpredictable as a result of the worldwide pandemic, geopolitical unrest, and climate-related disasters, leaving supply chain, logistics, and transportation workers searching for visibility.
Access to useful freight rate data has become a strategic goal as firms work to manage market instabilities. Ocean shipping and air freight transportation expenses are now being discussed at the corporate board level. Additionally, in a world that is becoming more and more data-driven, procurement, finance, and other business activities cannot perform efficiently without data that is suitable for the task at hand.
This is where Xeneta aims to make a difference. 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 with the data they need to understand current and historical market behaviour – reporting live on market averages and low/high movements for both short and long-term contracts.
The company says that its all-in-one platform delivers further value by providing data and insights on capacity, reliability, blank sailings, detention and demurrage, dynamic load factor, emissions data, and more.
Through digitisation and a crowdsourced approach to 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 300 million contracted container and air freight rates, and covers over 160,000 global trade routes.
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.
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