By Jeff Berman, Group News Editor
Earlier today, Seattle-based digital freight broker Convoy said it has made continued inroads on the investment front in securing $400 million in Series D funding. Company officials said that a key objective with this round of funding is to eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars of waste in the trucking industry.
Convoy officials said that this round of funding was co-led by Generation Investment Management, a dedicated sustainability investment firm, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. (previous Convoy investor), with other participants including:
- Baillie Gifford
- Fidelity Management and Research Co.
- Durable Capital Partners
- Series C investors
- CapitalG
- Lone Pine Capital.
This brings Convoy’s total capital raised to more than $668 million from investors (going back to 2015 including:
- Greylock Partners, Y Combinator,
- Cascade Investment (the private investment vehicle of William H. Gates III),
- Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff,
- Code.org founders Hadi
- Ali Partovi, U2’s Bono
- The Edge
- Jeff Bezos via Bezos Expeditions
- among others.
And the company added that this most recent round of funding will speed up its focus on “eliminating inefficiencies that remain in the trucking sector, leading to lower costs and improved quality for shippers and increased earnings and respect for the millions of truck drivers on the road, and the elimination of excess pollution from miles driven without cargo.”
Dan Lewis, Convoy co-founder and CEO, said in a statement that Convoy was built with a focus on creating a more efficient model for connecting shippers and truckers.
“Trucking has historically been a zero-sum game, born from a marketplace where when one side wins the other side loses,” he said. “The magic of applying technology to this decades-old industry is that we can create a true win-win for both sides, lowering the total cost to shippers with better service, while removing the hassle of wasted time and miles for truck drivers, allowing them to earn more. Building a more efficient digital freight network also means we can dramatically reduce carbon emissions associated with empty miles, which is good for the planet.”
This sentiment speaks to the company’s focus, from its inception in 2015, on “Zero Waste” and building a better and more efficient economic model in trucking, according to Convoy Chief Product Officer Ziad Ismail.
“Over the past year, we achieved several specific and important milestones that have validated our approach,” Ismail told LM. “In February, we achieved 100% automation of load matching, which means we have much lower operational costs in brokering. In June, we announced Automated Reloads, giving drivers multiple optimized loads at a time. This reduces empty miles by 45% and reduces cost per mile — and reduces CO2 emissions at the same time. With this investment, we will double down on the progress we’ve been making for both shippers and carriers. That includes further investments in initiatives like 100% automated matching and Automated Reloads, but also new programs like Direct-from-Shipper and Convoy Connect, which are showing good traction.”
On a competitive level, Ismail said that with this investment Convoy can accelerate its leadership position and work on better serving both carriers and shippers.
“Our focus is to continue building upon the industry’s most efficient digital freight network,” he said. “With milestones like 100% automated matching and many other product and feature developments, we are leading the way to a different model. We are proud of innovating for our customers, but we believe there is much more to do. We are very excited for the future of trucking.”
Original Source: https://www.logisticsmgmt.com/article/convoy_secures_an_additional_400_million_in_funding_with_a_focus_on_elimina