French start-up Searoutes has announced that it has completed a €1.3 million financing round, led by venture capital firm WSB Beteiligungs, to support the further development of its ‘eco-calculator’, used to compute the carbon footprint of a container along its journey.
The new investment is in addition to a grant of €1.1 million awarded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) in August this year, bringing Searoutes’ total funding to date to €2.4 million.
Created in 2019 by Dr Pierre Garreau and Carsten Bullemer, Searoutes has already received support from ZEBOX, the incubator and accelerator founded by the CMA CGM Group. The company has developed a SaaS platform using its own data and proprietary algorithms to support shippers in reducing their emissions by processing datasets of freight information (historical ship positions, satellite data, engine specifications, schedule information, weather data, etc.) into meaningful information.
The new investment deal will fund the acceleration of the deployment of the system to shippers and freight forwarders, the company says, as well as other related technology platforms. Searoutes is also continuing to invest in research, in partnership with AI laboratories, to optimise the door-to-door loading-unloading cycle.
“Shippers have to deal with purchasing and managing logistics throughout the entire supply chain, not just the ocean piece. We need to help them shape better procurement strategies, for instance by choosing greener modes of transport, or more appropriate port of loading or discharge,” said Dr Pierre Garreau, Founder and Managing Director, Searoutes.
“Searoutes’ vision is to give more visibility to green carriers and enable shippers to select them more proactively.”
In addition to WSB Beteiligungs, the funding round included investors like OHB venture Capital, Team ABC venture, CMA CGM, and angels such as Thomas Sørbø, founder of Xeneta.
