Logistics fintech platform Navix announced Tuesday it has secured $5 million in seed funding from several strategic and angel investors, including Tommy Barnes, logistics veteran and chief revenue officer of less-than-truckload platform MyCarrier, and Rob Estes, chairman and CEO of LTL carrier Estes Express Lines.
In an interview with FreightWaves, Navix co-founder Eric Krueger explained that after founding the company in June 2021 it has been flying under the radar — self-funded — and working on building a back-office system that could integrate data from carriers, transportation management systems, financial systems and business intelligence platforms to streamline freight auditing and payment operations.
While the system provides solutions for all shipping modes, long conversations with LTL providers helped Krueger diagnose issues with current freight auditing systems looking to automate those processes.
“The genesis of Navix was developed through a long-standing relationship with Evans Transportation,” Krueger said. “They were looking for a freight auditing solution specific to their LTL and managed transportation business units and found nothing that fit. [They knew] they needed highly configurable business rules by customer, vendor and location that also evaluates contracts, that can tell me why an accessorial was flagged … down to those levels of granularity.”
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Krueger went on to diagnose these same problems with some of Navix’s largest customers, including SunTerra Logistics, Armstrong Transport Group, Running Ox Logistics and Veritas Logistics.
These insider conversations, which have led to creating true value while building the fintech software-as-a-service platform quickly, caught the attention of Navix’s angel investors.
“Some organizations approach technology in the logistics space as either ‘outside in’ or ‘inside out,’” Barnes said in a news release. “They either have a great idea but don’t understand the industry-specific pain points and operations well enough to get ‘inside’ the circle, or they are industry folks who understand their needs but don’t have the expertise to apply the technology to solve the problem. To be successful, you need a combination of both. Navix has both.”
Estes agreed with that assessment.
“They understand their customers’ problems, the value proposition and how to apply the technology to solve them,” he said. “Those are the key ingredients to a successful technology provider in the logistics industry, and I’m looking forward to being a part of it.”
With capital to fund the expansion of product development, customer success and onboarding personnel, along with new investor relationships with deep freight backgrounds, Krueger looks forward to disrupting current freight auditing solutions.
“We are trying to remain agnostic and become really good at reducing friction when it comes to invoicing disputes and resolutions,” he said. “We want to ensure that all parties in the ecosystem — carriers, shippers and intermediaries — are involved. At the end of the day, our entire vision is to increase the speed of the cash conversion cycle and become that one source of truth to resolve disputes in real time.”
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