U.K.-based Shipamax has raised $7 million to digitize and automate global logistics back-office functions.
The Series A investment was led by Mosaic Ventures, with participation from existing investors Crane Venture Partners and Y Combinator.
The funding will help Shipamax double in size over the months ahead and invest in engineering development as well as customer success, according to a news release.
Founded in 2016 in London, Shipamax provides logistics companies such as freight forwarders with a tool kit to automate back-office processes.
Currently, logistics providers can receive up to 25 documents for every shipment they manage and a deluge of emails. Shipamax automatically identifies these emails and documents, extracts and understands the data and syncs with these key systems via its open API.
Some companies have tried to address the problem by using optical character recognition to identify information and place it in templates the customer must build from scratch. Shipamax, by contrast, is a turnkey solution.
“Our proprietary anti-template technology allows freight forwarders to reduce costs spent on data entry by 80% and shift these resources to high-value tasks,” said Jenna Brown, co-founder and CEO of Shipamax, in the release.
The company now processes in excess of 18 million emails per year, tracking by document type — e.g., orders, bills of lading and invoices. Accuracy reaches 99% for the most advanced types, according to the release.
That success rate helped draw investors.
“After years of quiet development and training across millions of documents, Shipamax is in prime position to rapidly roll out across this massive industry and bring enormous value to
freight forwarders and shippers alike,” said Simon Levene, co-founder and partner of Mosaic Ventures, in the release.