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Shipment tracking start-up Roambee raises $4.1 million
Roambee plans to use the funds for research and development and to expand to new geographies
Bengaluru: Shipment tracking firm Roambee Corp Thursday said it has raised $4.1 million, with $3.1 million coming from Deutsche Telekom’s corporate customer arm T-Systems, and the rest from undisclosed Silicon Valley-based investors.
Roambee, which was founded in 2013, had raised $2.5 million from undisclosed investors in May 2016. The company offers a device that has multiple sensors which can track shipments, along with software that provides analytics and real time information about shipments in transit.
The US-registered company generates more than half its revenues from India, and plans to use the fresh funds for research and development and to expand to new geographies.
The company has 50 employees in India and another 50 will be added in the next two months, said chief executive officer, Sanjay Sharma, who had earlier founded KeyTone Technologies, which was acquired by Global Asset Tracking Ltd and Plexus Technologies, which became an ICICI Ventures portfolio company.
“It’s a fairly antiquated industry and highly fragmented, where the biggest challenge is the inefficiency in the supply chain. For example, if you are moving ice cream, our device tells you that the temperature increased by one degree. Not only that, we go a step further and tell you how much time you have to react to it too,” said Sharma.
Roambee manufactures its tracking devices in Delhi and said it would also use the additional funding to increase production. It currently has about 100 customers in India, including Nestle India Ltd, Blue Dart Express Ltd, GlaxoSmithkline Pharmaceuticals Ltd and Hindustan Unilever Ltd.
However, given the varied customer base, one challenge for Roambee would be to take the same data and localise how the analytics are reported based on each market and specifications.
“Another challenge is how we are going to look at reverse logistics. If our device is part of a shipment sent to Atlanta, for example, I need to pick it up from there. So that’s where Deutsche Telekom will help us because they have offices in every geography in the world,” said Sharma.
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First Published:12 Jan 2017, 08:05 PM IST
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