FreightHub, the European digital freight forwarder, has raised $30 million in Series B financing, TechCrunch has reported. Venture firm Tis Rider Global along with Maersk Growth led the funding round.
Existing investors Northzone, Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital (GFC), and Cherry Ventures and London-based investment firm Unbound also participated.
A flurry of activity has hit the digital freight forwarding space since the beginning of 2019. In April London freight forwarding startup Zencargo closed a Series A round of funding of about $19 million. In February, Flexport, one of the biggest startups in this space, raised $1 billion at a $3.2 billion valuation by SoftBank to ramp up its own freight forwarding business, platform and operations.
FreightHub and its competitors seek to disrupt traditional freight forwarding companies that still use legacy information technology systems and cumbersome and manual processes. The Berlin- and Hamburg-based startup offers transport services for sea, air and rail freight, built on digitized processes – from booking, communication, data exchange and document management to supply chain optimization.
The startup claims 1,500 customers – including Home24, Miele and Viessmann.
“Our forwarding solution offers more transparency, reliability and ultimately time and cost advantages for large- and mid-sized organizations,” said CCO Michael Wax in a statement. “Today, we serve some of the most well-known German brands and grew our volumes again 3x year over year.”
In addition to existing locations in Berlin and Hamburg, FreightHub recently opened its first Asian office in Hong Kong and acquired a sea freight forwarder specializing in Asian imports.
The company will use the new funds to further develop services and expand its Asian presence.