Friday, January 21, 2022

Explorate raises $7.5m from Leigh Jasper and eVP


Co-founders Conor Hagan and Alex Ewart - freight forwarding experts ,  have  raised $7.5 million from Leigh Jasper  and Justin Lipman and Les Szekely of  @EVP_VC , to digitise an inefficient process in the logistics industry  to provide an exceptional customer experience. 


The pain 

The founders  mentor,  Paul Little AO (for his services to logistics -and former CEO  of Toll ) ,through the Skalata Ventures program,  helped them focus on the pain of the logistics industry


About half of the world’s yearly containers still being booked by phone or fax.


The information flow that is required to ship goods around the world is becoming increasingly complex and the cost of shipping internationally has skyrocketed.


Customer Service is lacking


What Exploratedoes 


Explorate gives importers and exporters an amazing CX by providing digital access to quotes and bookings, real-time tracking and tracing, digital dashboards and workflow management.


“Our platform helps importers and exporters to reduce these supply chain impacts by comparing rates and sailing times, simplifying complicated shipments as well as giving insight into the carbon impact of their logistics operations.”


More than $200 million of goods have now been shipped through the platform.


The money 


It’s like deja vu for Leigh  Jasper who solved a similar pain for the construction industry 


The logistics sector had been slow adopters of technology, and that meant there is plenty of scope for disruption. 

  • Big problem 
  • Big opportunity 


The money will be used to increase the team from  35 people to 70 within the next 12 months.


What the founders have to say


“The vision -  to be one of the world’s leading freight forwarders, even taking the digital component out of it.


“With Japan Post buying Toll and its performance since then, there’s a big gap in the market. 

We have the ingredients - the software, the team,the investors and the money.

That void is now ours to fill.” enthuses Conor Hogan


Richard White from WiseTech here’s a formidable competitor 



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