Online freight marketplace Freightos has acquired Spain’s WebCargoNet to help expand its database of air, ocean, and land freight rates.
Terms of the deal acquisition remain undisclosed, though a source close to the deal tells me it is in the seven-figure euro range and is a mixture of cash and stock. WebCargoNet’s air cargo rate management will remain as an independent brand alongside Hong Kong-headquartered Freightos’ own freight rate management solution and the Freightos market.
With a mission to bring realtime quotes to the freight industry, Freightos might best be described as a Kayak or Expedia for international shippers.
Both individual users and freight forwarders can use the platform to search for and filter shipping options by price, time, route, fees involved, or type of transportation, replacing the old way of doing business, which relied on fax machines an Excel spreadsheets.
In addition to the Freightos market, the company offers a product called “AcceleRate,” which is described as a software-as-a-service to automate pricing and routing for leading carriers, freight forwarders and shippers.
“Basically, we help companies importing or exporting goods instantly compare and book freight shipments, reducing costs, introducing transparency and improving service,” Dr. Zvi Schreiber, CEO and founder of Freightos, tells me. “We help logistics providers automate sales both internally and externally, reducing manual labor and inaccuracies”.
As we noted late last year, when the startup raised $14 million in Series B funding, the average freight quote typically has 20 associated fees: the trucking fee, the ocean liner fee, the fuel fees, the handling fee, the piracy risk fee, the seasonal surcharge, the hazardous surcharge, the port fees, and so on.
To that end, Freightos says that, now it’s combined with WebCargoNet, it’s able to offer over 200 million freight pricing data points, establishing what it claims is the largest freight rate database in existence.
“The convergence of data from both companies will make it simpler and faster than ever before for carriers and forwarders to sell their services and for importers and exporters to buy, resulting in smoother world trade,” adds the company.