The Ghent and London based company Qargo raises 12 million euros in Series A round.
Qargo - the transport management solution transforming the logistics industry - has raised 12 million euros in a Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital.
The new funding will be used to launch in new markets, develop the product and strengthen the engineering team to keep up with its fast-growing customer base.
The logistics industry is facing challenges including rising operating costs, demands to decarbonise, increases in fuel prices and a growing wave of cyber-attacks, leading to lower margins. Over the past year, nearly 500 haulage companies collapsed in the UK alone under the weight of these pressures. To succeed, companies must streamline operations and automate manual processes to improve profitability.
Founded in 2020 by Adriaan Coppens (CEO), Joeri de Turck (CTO) and Sander de Wilde (Head of Engineering), Qargo’s solution addresses the needs of logistics companies and empowers them to achieve a more profitable and sustainable future.
Replacing legacy software with AI-powered workflow automation
Transport management software provides enterprise resource planning for logistics companies; this market is expected to grow to 19.1 billion dollars by 2032. From order entry to route planning, tracking loads and invoicing customers, companies need an end-to-end solution which can handle all their needs. Traditionally the industry has relied on legacy systems, built-on-premise, with clunky, inflexible software, or offline Excel spreadsheets.
In contrast, Qargo’s cloud-first SaaS platform integrates seamlessly with customers’ systems, serving as their operating system. Qargo customers can process orders up to 10 times faster than traditional tools, auto-import PDFs and automate address lookups to make route planning and deliveries easier. The planning algorithm automatically combines loads into optimal journeys that minimise distance, duration and carbon emissions. This allows Qargo customers to reduce the number of empty miles. Qargo has over 140 customers across Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK.
‘The most positive customer testimonials ever heard’
Rob Moffat, partner at Balderton Capital, said: “Logistics is a 5 trillion dollars market globally but is often overlooked by software companies. Most companies in the sector are still using incredibly dated software which does not meet their needs, and working around this with whiteboards and calls. What we love about Adriaan, Joeri and Sander is that they are outsiders to the industry, having previously built a successful software business OTA Insight, but have completely immersed themselves in transport management software. They have built a modern SaaS that their users spend all day using and really love. I have never before heard customer testimonials as positive as Qargo's - their customers are really emotional about how Qargo improves their working lives. What’s more, the significant impact Qargo can have on carbon emissions, by reducing empty truck miles and improving asset utilisation, is really important to us.”
