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kindrik partners advises AI-powered logistics startup portcast on US$3.2m pre-series A round
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We’re pleased to have advised Portcast, a Singapore-based logistics startup, on its recent US$3.2m pre-series A round. The round was led by Imperial Venture Fund, a joint corporate VC vehicle between Newtown Partners and South African logistics company Imperial. Other participants in the round include Wavemaker Partners, TMV, Innoport, and SGInnovate.
Portcast offers a SaaS platform that enables freight forwarders and manufacturers to achieve real-time visibility using historical data and AI modelling. It enables the logistics industry to track shipments in real time and to predict events that might affect their progress, such as tides, weather events, and pandemic-related supply issues. The platform can also map out the cascading effects of disruptions such as with the Suez Canal congestion.
Portcast was founded in 2018 by CEO and co-founder Nidhi Gupta. Prior to Portcast, Gupta spent 10 years in the logistics industry in senior leadership roles.
With its new round of funding, the company intends to double its team size, expand into new markets and launch new product features such as order-level visibility and scenario planning.
Partner Chris Wilson says of the deal, “Logistics is an industry that is ready for transformation, and this has become even more apparent in the context of the disruptions caused during the pandemic. We look forward to seeing Portcast’s technology making the logistics field more efficient, effective, and robust.”
Read our other recent deal announcements here.
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Kindrik Partners advised VC firm Illuminate Financial on its investment in Singapore-based AI-driven data processing and automation company bluesheets. Illuminate led the US$6.5 million series A round. Other returning investors included Insignia Ventures Partners, Antler Elevate, and 1982 Ventures.
Illuminate invests in B2B fintech and enterprise software companies that build solutions for the financial services industry. Backed by global financial institutions such as Citi, JP Morgan, Barclays, Jefferies, Singapore Exchange Group, and BNY Mellon, Illuminate uses its extensive network and industry knowledge to help their portfolio companies achieve their full potential in addition to providing capital.
bluesheets offers AI-driven data processing and workflow automation software that helps businesses digitise and automate their bookkeeping processes. It plans to use the funds to further enhance its AI capabilities and accelerate growth in key APAC markets, including Singapore, Thailand, ANZ, and Hong Kong.
We’re happy to have advised Singapore-based synthetic data company Betterdata on an oversubscribed seed round of $1.65 million, led by Investible.
The company was founded in 2021 by Dr. Uzair Javaid and Kevin Yee and allows clients to share data faster and more securely in compliance with stricter data privacy regulations being introduced around the world. Betterdata uses generative AI to convert real data into synthetic data that looks, feels, and behaves like real datasets. These synthetic datasets retain the structure and correlations of the original data while eliminating the privacy and security concerns that come with holding and sharing sensitive data.
Betterdata plans to use the funding to publicly launch its product, hire more staff as the company scales, and improve its technology stack, with the aim of providing support for single-table, multi-table, and time-series datasets. The company also plans to expand across the Asia-Pacific region over the next two years.
