The operations behind moving goods around the world takes coordination among a number of supply chain actors to solve complex problems effectively. A proper channel of communication among these teams can be difficult to achieve and can leave a lot of room for error and slow workflow.
Insight Partners led a Series B funding round for communication software company SEDNA Systems announced Monday to help improve the relay of information through email among disjointed teams often seen in logistics.
“Bill started reimagining email where it was most broken and therefore hardest to fix — large teams managing huge volumes and complicated processes,” said Rebecca Liu Doyle, a principal at Insight Partners, of SEDNA CEO Bill Dobie.
Insight Partners, which has invested in supply chain innovators including project44, PayCargo, Bringg, Shopify and parcelLab, led the $34 million round with participation from past investors including Stride.VC, Chalfen Ventures and the SAP.i0 fund, to provide SEDNA with the resources to transform the way logistics teams communicate.
Related article: Project44 raises $202M in Series E, boosts value to $1.2B
“Today, SEDNA’s power is in its ability to introduce immense speed, simplicity and delight to any inbox experience, regardless of scale or complexity. We are excited to partner with the SEDNA team as they continue to make digital communication more intelligent for teams in global supply chain and beyond,” said Liu-Doyle.
While SEDNA provides email communication solutions for all industries, Dobie was astounded by the complex communication between logistics partners during his time in bulk shipping and hopes to gain better perception of how to program the company’s models with Insight Partners by the company’s side.
“Uncoordinated digitization has made business noisier. Email is broken, chats are a mess and getting work done is hard,” said Dobie. “SEDNA’s single digital workspace makes business communication flow. Our intelligent and collaborative email stream breaks down silos so our customers work faster. We’re excited to work with Insight — a true scale partner that understands how our platform will deliver enormous value to customers in this complex world.”
Funding details: SEDNA Systems
| Funding amount | $34 million |
| Funding round | Series B |
| Lead investor | Insight Partners |
| Secondary investors | SAP.iO, Chalfen Ventures and Stride.VC |
| Business goals for the round | Continue to develop its product and go-to market functions |
| Total funding | $44 million |
The platform’s API framework makes for a “low code” solution that has been refined to accommodate the team collaboration often seen from the logistics providers the company serves.
SEDNA has a number of use cases to pull from to improve communication streams, with customers including maritime technology provider Wallem Group, shipping company Oldendorff Carriers, global dry bulk carrier Western Bulk, global manufacturer SGM Inc. and international energy company Cheniere.
With integrations into email hosts, the platform creates team inboxes for complete project visibility between members with tools including Smart Push notifications, message buckets, shareable bookmarks, analytics and document management tools to allow teams to collaborate more effectively.
Related article: Commentary: SEDNA Systems improves how teams work worldwide
According to SEDNA’s website, the company will be able to save these customers’ users up to 10 hours a week through its intelligent email software.
“SEDNA is one of the few software companies that actually helps a large number of users to save hours of work every day,” said Mike Chalfen of Chalfen Ventures. “It has been impressive to see [Dobie] build a leadership team that can execute on this huge opportunity and to attract the new capital to fuel the growth ahead.”
With its new funds, the new executive team — including Eric Cullerier as vice president of customer success and Jim Preston as vice president of global sales and new board members Liu-Doyle and Keith Wallington — SEDNA intends to develop its data science, product and go-to-market functions to break communication barriers.
“Stride.VC is doubling down on SEDNA in this round as we’re convinced we can put a new messaging leader on the map. You can’t crack the code on reinventing team email without rethinking messaging, collaboration and transactions all in one, which is exactly what this team has done,” said Stride.VC founder Fred Destin.
You may also enjoy:
Shogun raises $67.5M to scale headless commerce technology