Shippeo announces record $40m funding round to accelerate global supply chain resilience
The investments will support Shippeo’s mission to help shippers and carriers run more collaborative, automated, sustainable, profitable, and customer-centric supply chains.
Paris, France - October 24, 2022 - Shippeo, a global leader in real-time multimodal supply chain transportation visibility, today announced a record-breaking fundraising round of $40 million, boosting investment to date to over $110 million, as the company ramps up global expansion of its best-in-category visibility platform.
All existing investors took part in the new round, including Battery Ventures, Partech, NGP Capital, ETF Partners, Bpifrance Digital Venture and SAP.io, alongside new strategic investors Hong Kong-based LFX Venture Partners and Japan-based Yamaha Motor Ventures, whose investment will help to ramp up operations across Asia-Pacific.
The investments will support Shippeo’s mission to help shippers and carriers run more collaborative, automated, sustainable, profitable, and customer-centric supply chains, leveraging global partner networks, real-time data and AI to enable greater ecosystem collaboration. Regarded by many companies as the heart of their operations, supply chains can now benefit from highly accurate, real-time operational visibility and perfect workflow orchestration, which have become crucial for overcoming the unprecedented challenges, uncertainty, and financial fallout from disruption that organizations continue to face.
“Given the challenging economic climate we find ourselves in, the fact that each of our existing investors took the opportunity to reinvest is a strong vote of confidence in us, thanks to the considerable growth rates and enviable customer satisfaction levels we’ve managed to maintain,” explains Shippeo CEO Pierre Khoury. “Benefitting from the addition of some notable new investors, this fundraising round is the largest ever for a supply chain visibility software in Europe, helping us bolster our sound financial position for many years to come, and accelerating our ongoing North American and APAC expansion, while giving customers and partners confidence in the longevity potential of our partnerships.”
Impressive growth trajectory
In the last 12 months, Shippeo’s company valuation has grown 70%, with a lean approach to cash burn helping to preserve a secure financial position and clear path to profitability. Over the past 3 years, Shippeo has expanded from a regional leader to a global leader in real-time shipment visibility, growing subscription revenues 80% year on year, and adding 150 global enterprise-level customers to its books, including Coca-Cola HBC, Renault, AkzoNobel, Philip Morris International, and Jaguar Land Rover. In parallel, the company has kept churn rates below 4%.
Having launched in the North American market earlier this year, Shippeo’s expansion is maintaining momentum through a recently announced partnership with e2open (NYSE: ETWO), the connected supply chain SaaS platform with the largest multi-enterprise network. Shippeo’s carrier network also grew to over 150,000 across the globe, with active shipment tracking in 92 countries, across all continents, including complex regions for tracking such as the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
Supporting growth was a tripling of team size to over 220 people. The company has welcomed several world-class executives, including London-based Anand Medepalli as Chief Product Officer, previously at BlueYonder and ServiceNow, Paris-based Philippe van Hove as Chief Revenue Officer, previously at Zuora and Lacework, and San Francisco-based Chris Mazza as SVP of International Growth, previously at ClearMetal.
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The company has also been recognized as a global industry leader in the G2 Fall 2022 Grid Report for Supply Chain Visibility for the fourth consecutive time, based on a high customer satisfaction score and large market presence. In the same report, Shippeo was voted number one easiest platform to use, with 98% of users rating the platform a four or five out of five stars.
Best-in-category data quality, capabilities, and user experience
Shippeo's ambition is to be the leading supply chain operating system, enabling fully automated and sustainable supply chains across the world, offering the highest data quality and ETA accuracy available on the market. Earlier this year, Shippeo announced several major product developments offering new features and capabilities for customers. These included an enhanced world-class ocean tracking solution, with a breakthrough user experience and powerful monitoring capabilities, as part of the first truly singular platform available on the market for tracking end-to-end shipments across all transport modes. Shippeo also debuted a new carbon visibility dashboard to simplify CO2 emissions monitoring from transport and distribution activities for both shippers and carriers. In parallel, shipment tracking ETA accuracy was boosted by a giant 32% and rail visibility capabilities enhanced via a new partnership with leading rail and intermodal transport management system provider Everysens.
Michael Brown, General Partner at Battery Ventures, is delighted with Shippeo’s prospects. “We see a bright future ahead for Shippeo. The fact that the company continues to attract and deliver for such high-caliber enterprise-level customers is a testament to their team’s focus on customer centricity from product development, through to solution consulting, deployment, and support. What’s more remarkable is that they’ve managed to achieve a market leadership position with comparatively lower funding and better cash efficiency versus some of their direct competitors, due to strong leadership and the highly capable team they’ve attracted.”
Penske said today that its facility in Channahon, Illinois, is now fully operational, and is predominantly powered by an onsite photovoltaic (PV) solar system, expected to generate roughly 80% of the building's energy needs at 200 KW capacity. Next, a Grand Rapids, Michigan, location will be also active in the coming months, and Penske's Linden, New Jersey, location is expected to go online in 2025.
And over the coming year, the Pennsylvania-based company will add seven more sites under its power purchase agreement with Sunrock Distributed Generation, retrofitting them with new PV solar systems which are expected to yield a total of roughly 600 KW of renewable energy. Those additional sites are all in California: Fresno, Hayward, La Mirada, National City, Riverside, San Diego, and San Leandro.
On average, four solar panel-powered Penske Truck Leasing facilities will generate an estimated 1-million-kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable energy annually and will result in an emissions avoidance of 442 metric tons (MT) CO2e, which is equal to powering nearly 90 homes for one year.
"The initiative to install solar systems at our locations is a part of our company's LEED-certified facilities process," Ivet Taneva, Penske’s vice president of environmental affairs, said in a release. "Investing in solar has considerable economic impacts for our operations as well as the environmental benefits of further reducing emissions related to electricity use."
Overall, Penske Truck Leasing operates and maintains more than 437,000 vehicles and serves its customers from nearly 1,000 maintenance facilities and more than 2,500 truck rental locations across North America.
That challenge is one of the reasons that fewer shoppers overall are satisfied with their shopping experiences lately, Lincolnshire, Illinois-based Zebra said in its “17th Annual Global Shopper Study.”th Annual Global Shopper Study.” While 85% of shoppers last year were satisfied with both the in-store and online experiences, only 81% in 2024 are satisfied with the in-store experience and just 79% with online shopping.
In response, most retailers (78%) say they are investing in technology tools that can help both frontline workers and those watching operations from behind the scenes to minimize theft and loss, Zebra said.
Just 38% of retailers currently use AI-based prescriptive analytics for loss prevention, but a much larger 50% say they plan to use it in the next 1-3 years. That was followed by self-checkout cameras and sensors (45%), computer vision (46%), and RFID tags and readers (42%) that are planned for use within the next three years, specifically for loss prevention.
Those strategies could help improve the brick and mortar shopping experience, since 78% of shoppers say it’s annoying when products are locked up or secured within cases. Adding to that frustration is that it’s hard to find an associate while shopping in stores these days, according to 70% of consumers. In response, some just walk out; one in five shoppers has left a store without getting what they needed because a retail associate wasn’t available to help, an increase over the past two years.
The survey also identified additional frustrations faced by retailers and associates:
challenges with offering easy options for click-and-collect or returns, despite high shopper demand for them
the struggle to confirm current inventory and pricing
lingering labor shortages and increasing loss incidents, even as shoppers return to stores
“Many retailers are laying the groundwork to build a modern store experience,” Matt Guiste, Global Retail Technology Strategist, Zebra Technologies, said in a release. “They are investing in mobile and intelligent automation technologies to help inform operational decisions and enable associates to do the things that keep shoppers happy.”
The survey was administered online by Azure Knowledge Corporation and included 4,200 adult shoppers (age 18+), decision-makers, and associates, who replied to questions about the topics of shopper experience, device and technology usage, and delivery and fulfillment in store and online.
Supply chains are poised for accelerated adoption of mobile robots and drones as those technologies mature and companies focus on implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and automation across their logistics operations.
That’s according to data from Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Mobile Robots and Drones, released this week. The report shows that several mobile robotics technologies will mature over the next two to five years, and also identifies breakthrough and rising technologies set to have an impact further out.
Gartner’s Hype Cycle is a graphical depiction of a common pattern that arises with each new technology or innovation through five phases of maturity and adoption. Chief supply chain officers can use the research to find robotic solutions that meet their needs, according to Gartner.
Gartner, Inc.
The mobile robotic technologies set to mature over the next two to five years are: collaborative in-aisle picking robots, light-cargo delivery robots, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for transport, mobile robotic goods-to-person systems, and robotic cube storage systems.
“As organizations look to further improve logistic operations, support automation and augment humans in various jobs, supply chain leaders have turned to mobile robots to support their strategy,” Dwight Klappich, VP analyst and Gartner fellow with the Gartner Supply Chain practice, said in a statement announcing the findings. “Mobile robots are continuing to evolve, becoming more powerful and practical, thus paving the way for continued technology innovation.”
Technologies that are on the rise include autonomous data collection and inspection technologies, which are expected to deliver benefits over the next five to 10 years. These include solutions like indoor-flying drones, which utilize AI-enabled vision or RFID to help with time-consuming inventory management, inspection, and surveillance tasks. The technology can also alleviate safety concerns that arise in warehouses, such as workers counting inventory in hard-to-reach places.
“Automating labor-intensive tasks can provide notable benefits,” Klappich said. “With AI capabilities increasingly embedded in mobile robots and drones, the potential to function unaided and adapt to environments will make it possible to support a growing number of use cases.”
Humanoid robots—which resemble the human body in shape—are among the technologies in the breakthrough stage, meaning that they are expected to have a transformational effect on supply chains, but their mainstream adoption could take 10 years or more.
“For supply chains with high-volume and predictable processes, humanoid robots have the potential to enhance or supplement the supply chain workforce,” Klappich also said. “However, while the pace of innovation is encouraging, the industry is years away from general-purpose humanoid robots being used in more complex retail and industrial environments.”
An eight-year veteran of the Georgia company, Hakala will begin his new role on January 1, when the current CEO, Tero Peltomäki, will retire after a long and noteworthy career, continuing as a member of the board of directors, Cimcorp said.
According to Hakala, automation is an inevitable course in Cimcorp’s core sectors, and the company’s end-to-end capabilities will be crucial for clients’ success. In the past, both the tire and grocery retail industries have automated individual machines and parts of their operations. In recent years, automation has spread throughout the facilities, as companies want to be able to see their entire operation with one look, utilize analytics, optimize processes, and lead with data.
“Cimcorp has always grown by starting small in the new business segments. We’ve created one solution first, and as we’ve gained more knowledge of our clients’ challenges, we have been able to expand,” Hakala said in a release. “In every phase, we aim to bring our experience to the table and even challenge the client’s initial perspective. We are interested in what our client does and how it could be done better and more efficiently.”
Although many shoppers will
return to physical stores this holiday season, online shopping remains a driving force behind peak-season shipping challenges, especially when it comes to the last mile. Consumers still want fast, free shipping if they can get it—without any delays or disruptions to their holiday deliveries.
One disruptor that gets a lot of headlines this time of year is package theft—committed by so-called “porch pirates.” These are thieves who snatch parcels from front stairs, side porches, and driveways in neighborhoods across the country. The problem adds up to billions of dollars in stolen merchandise each year—not to mention headaches for shippers, parcel delivery companies, and, of course, consumers.
Given the scope of the problem, it’s no wonder online shoppers are worried about it—especially during holiday season. In its annual report on package theft trends, released in October, the
security-focused research and product review firm Security.org found that:
17% of Americans had a package stolen in the past three months, with the typical stolen parcel worth about $50. Some 44% said they’d had a package taken at some point in their life.
Package thieves poached more than $8 billion in merchandise over the past year.
18% of adults said they’d had a package stolen that contained a gift for someone else.
Ahead of the holiday season, 88% of adults said they were worried about theft of online purchases, with more than a quarter saying they were “extremely” or “very” concerned.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are some low-tech steps consumers can take to help guard against porch piracy along with some high-tech logistics-focused innovations in the pipeline that can protect deliveries in the last mile. First, some common-sense advice on avoiding package theft from the Security.org research:
Install a doorbell camera, which is a relatively low-cost deterrent.
Bring packages inside promptly or arrange to have them delivered to a secure location if no one will be at home.
Consider using click-and-collect options when possible.
If the retailer allows you to specify delivery-time windows, consider doing so to avoid having packages sit outside for extended periods.
These steps may sound basic, but they are by no means a given: Fewer than half of Americans consider the timing of deliveries, less than a third have a doorbell camera, and nearly one-fifth take no precautions to prevent package theft, according to the research.
Tech vendors are stepping up to help. One example is
Arrive AI, which develops smart mailboxes for last-mile delivery and pickup. The company says its Mailbox-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform will revolutionize the last mile by building a network of parcel-storage boxes that can be accessed by people, drones, or robots. In a nutshell: Packages are placed into a weatherproof box via drone, robot, driverless carrier, or traditional delivery method—and no one other than the rightful owner can access it.
Although the platform is still in development, the company already offers solutions for business clients looking to secure high-value deliveries and sensitive shipments. The health-care industry is one example: Arrive AI offers secure drone delivery of medical supplies, prescriptions, lab samples, and the like to hospitals and other health-care facilities. The platform provides real-time tracking, chain-of-custody controls, and theft-prevention features. Arrive is conducting short-term deployments between logistics companies and health-care partners now, according to a company spokesperson.
The MaaS solution has a pretty high cool factor. And the common-sense best practices just seem like solid advice. Maybe combining both is the key to a more secure last mile—during peak shipping season and throughout the year as well.