With a mission to provide global logistics providers with fluid, systemized data, Vizion co-founders CEO Kyle Henderson and CTO Tyler Hughes combined their extensive history in technology product development to develop a single application programming interface to not only track shipments but anticipate potential bottlenecks.
“My co-founder and I were previously at [supply chain planning software company] ClearMetal and that’s actually where I learned about logistics,” Henderson told FreightWaves. “When I arrived there, I was very surprised to hear that it was difficult to get any data — even basic data. Then when you got it, it was ridiculously low quality and you really had to build a modern application or product on top of it.”
Henderson explained it wasn’t until recently that automation and real-time visibility were worth the investment.
“For a long time it was cheaper to hire people [to solve problems] than it was to invest in technology,” he said. “COVID changed consumption habits, rates exploded and hands were not available, as they once were, to solve problems. These problems were overwhelming and risky to their business.”
Since 2018, the company has focused solely on creating a pipeline for innovation. This has allowed FreightTech solutions, like global freight marketplace FreightMango, to build technology stacks knowing they are founded on accurate data.
Related article: FreightMango partners with Vizion for long-term visibility needs
On Friday, Vizion announced its API strategy landed the company an additional $3.25 million seed round led by supply chain specialist Tech Square Ventures with participation from new investors Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, MS&AD Ventures and Ashish Mistry and existing investors Dynamo Ventures, 1984 Ventures, Wavemaker Partners and SaaS Ventures.
“By expanding our investment in Vizion, we’re excited to watch the Vizion team accelerate leadership around container logistics visibility,” said Santosh Sankar, a partner at Dynamo Ventures and board member at Vizion. “Vizion delivers on the promise that starts with easy access to tracking containerized freight and then delivering the highest quality, most extensive dataset possible to both shippers and forwarders.”
Funding details: Vizion
| Funding amount | $3.25 million |
| Funding round | Seed |
| Lead investor | Tech Square Ventures |
| Secondary investors | Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, MS&AS Ventures, Ashish Mistry, Dynamo Ventures, 1984 Ventures, Wavemaker Partners and SaaS Ventures |
| Business goals for the round | Invest in human capital for product advancement and customer expansion |
| Total funding | $4.75 million |
The company plans to use the new funds to bring on more human capital to continue advancing its current software and expand its customer base.
“We are going to be providing more value and doubling down on our current product,” said Henderson. “Today we offer more than 60 standardized events across carriers and we enrich the data by bringing in additional sources to fill the holes of data we cannot access directly. Our team members have been really great at tracking down answers to questions that we could not automatically generate. From those sources, we have created a sizable intelligent network for sourcing information on global shipments.
“From a product road map perspective, we have made great partnerships for direct connections into [port] terminals, rail and deeper into global regions including Europe,” he said.
Vizion also hopes to create a data lake architecture, mirroring Amazon Web Services, creating a competitive, sizable dataset centered around containerized freight, said Henderson.
“Amazon Web Services makes it easy to host web applications for scalable solutions,” he explained. “We are looking to do the same thing for supply chain software by breaking down the data barriers that stop anyone from building the tools they need to offer better services.”
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