FarEye, a global software-as-a-service delivery management platform, announced Tuesday it has closed a $100 million Series E round led by TCV and Dragoneer Investment Group with participation from past investors including Eight Roads Ventures, Fundamentum and Honeywell. Along with the raise, Gopi Vaddi, a general partner at TCV, will join the company’s board of directors.
The company has raised a total of $150.7 million since 2013.
In an interview with FreightWaves, Kushal Nahata, co-founder and CEO of FarEye, explained how the exponential growth of the e-commerce sector, along with brands accelerating their digital transformation to meet customer demand, has allowed the company to capitalize on the delivery management market.
“Brands are realizing if they can’t [guarantee] a great delivery experience, they will be out of business,” he said. “They need to figure out a plan so they can get things up and running in three months or in six months. But that’s where they come out screaming, ‘What do I get? Can I find a solution which is reliable, scalable and can provide me with all delivery options available within my network? Will I be able to use my local network or should I use my external network? Can we do seamless returns?’ We are that single delivery platform for all [of those needs] and that makes us very, very special.”
The company was recently named on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platforms, a visualization tool for technology buyers to evaluate vendors against their competitors.
FarEye was listed as a “challenger” in the visibility space and was highlighted for its strong footprint in the Asia-Pacific region and the industry-specific tools within its platform, including its fleet management and visibility solutions.
Nahata believes these types of tools are creating a simpler delivery experience, which allows the company to bring cost savings to his customers but also improve the workflow and overall experience of their employees.
“Our optimization tools can reduce your cost by 20% to 30% but for us, the aha moment is when a driver comes in and says, ‘It was a great day for me,’” he said. “We are making life simpler for the consumers, for the drivers and for the dispatchers. … This is driving adoption of our tools and it is easier for the brands to scale out [their network].”
Gartner critiqued the company for its lack of a global footprint, specifically in North America and Europe. Nahata explained FarEye’s new funds will be used to tackle that initiative, along with adding new software capabilities.
“We want to make the entire delivery journey 100% autonomous,” he said. “The other part of it will be investing in expansion in the global market, specifically right now because it is extremely hot from a SaaS perspective.”
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