Issues across the global supply chain have been a major concern for many of us in recent years. The process of transporting goods from one location to another has become increasingly complicated, with longer delivery times, higher shipping costs, and significant delays putting extra stress on a fragmented logistics space. In addition, freight is one of the verticals that seems to have missed the wave of digital transformation that has transformed many sectors over the past several years.
However, it may come as a surprise that these challenges are what make the freight vertical an attractive area for innovation. Recently, we’ve seen a surge in innovative companies that are transforming the freight industry by bringing it into the digital age. These companies are working towards improving efficiencies, cutting costs, and even generating new revenue streams by leveraging technology.
At Team8, we are thrilled about backing companies that are driving digitization in traditional industries. One such company is Wisor AI, which we led in its $8 million seed round. Wisor is a fintech platform that uses data-driven innovations to deliver tangible efficiency gains for freight forwarders, who play a crucial role in the supply chain.
Most consumers are not aware of the fact that there are about 300,000 freight forwarding businesses that manage the logistical complexities of shipping goods via air, land and sea. Despite advancements in technology, freight forwarders are still heavily reliant on manual practices for routing and pricing, leading to a range of inefficiencies and slim profit margins. With the increasing volume of global shipments and heightened consumer expectations for faster, more reliable, and visible shipments, freight forwarders desperately need to digitize.
Introducing Wisor AI
Wisor enables freight forwarders to automatically create shipping quotes, with the underlying pricing options aggregated instantaneously from multiple sources in the manner of Skyscanner.com or Kayak.
As an advanced freight booking software solution, Wisor automates both the cumbersome, manual process of aggregating pricing data provided by shipping companies, airlines and trucking companies, as well as the optimization of routes. Freight forwarders can leverage Wisor’s plug and play solution to plan, price and book a shipment in seconds instead of hours or days, creating genuine ‘wow’ moments for clients.
Wisor’s solution leverages Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automatically provide a delivery quote based on email inquiries by customers. Email correspondence has been a core tenet of freight forwarder’s work for decades. Creating a solution that allows them to maintain their way of working while also enjoying the value of digitization and automation is a strong differentiator and driver of adoption. Existing customers have been able to double the amount of deals and shipments they book, without changing their software, employees, or operational structure. In addition to pricing automation, Wisor’s advanced algorithms continuously optimize pricing in the background – even after the booking has been placed – presenting further opportunities for freight forwarders to cut costs and improve their margins.
Wisor is led by CEO Raz Ronen, a professional athlete and former commander in an elite air force unit. He co-founded the company alongside distinguished leaders in AI, Data Science, and Machine Learning: Ido Karavany, Wisor’s CTO, and Eiran Bolless, Wisor’s VP Data & Analytics. Ido and Eiran worked together for over 14 years at Mobileye – a pioneer of driver assistance technology – and later Intel, after its acquisition of Mobileye. After years of building products that transform data into actionable insights for autonomous vehicles, they are now bringing an innovative data-driven approach to planning and pricing of global shipping.
Rich development pipeline ahead
Looking ahead, by fully digitizing routing, pricing and quoting, Wisor’s platform will evolve into an end-to-end booking solution that incorporates all back office operations including payments, financing and insurance.
The potential to become a “one stop shop” for all shipping booking functions gives Wisor a significant competitive advantage in selling to customers in this category, and also opens a strong prospective partnership network with other players in the industry. We look forward to helping them build on this phenomenal start and assertively establish a dominant market position in the months and years ahead.