Freight forwarding customs brokerage firm Flexport is looking to become the new ‘Uber’ of the seas as it attempts to connect customers with containerships, making it one of the first companies to digitise international shipping, according Bloomberg.
Bill Trenchard, a Partner at First Round Capital, said: “This is a tremendously hard business to execute as there are so many moving parts. They need to be a great tech, logistics and services company all at the same time. Few entrepreneurs can pull this off while rapidly scaling. I think Ryan is uniquely suited to the challenge.”
The business venture has so far raised around US$6.6 million from the likes of Google Ventures and actor Ashton Kutcher’s fund.
PTI previously reported that car manufacturer Rolls Royce agreed to build more than 200 engines in a bid to power and revive South Africa’s freight network.
KPMG recently predicted that the transport and logistics sector is likely to boom by more than $59 billion in 2015 as a result of consolidation and geographical expansion.
Shipping container growth has also sky-rocketed in recent years with global container lifts reaching more than 600 million TEU as of 2013.
Hong Kong currently has the largest number of departure shipments. See below for a graph illustrating this statistic:
(Source: Flexport)
