While the global supply chain is hit with more and more challenges, Munich-based startup TradeLink has secured €12 million in Series A funding to streamline logistics with its collaboration platform.
The global supply chain is under increasing pressure, and as a result, operators are struggling to keep up with demand. TradeLink, a supply chain collaboration platform developed speciifclaly to streamline warehouse operations has just announced a raise of €12 million to tackle the issue.
The funding was led by Insight Partners with participation from existing investors Point Nine and Fly Ventures and angel investors Alexander Doll (former CFO of Deutsche Bahn), David Nothacker (CEO of Sennder), Alex Hersham (CEO of Zencargo), and Stephan Kniewasser (former CEO of Transporeon, TeamViewer).
In recent years, supply chains have faced more and more challenges and pressures – from delivery bottlenecks and missing materials to rising logistics costs, lack of shipment transparency and overworked warehouse staff. It’s led to inefficiencies and process breakdowns that are costing players throughout the value chain billions of euros, and impacting employees and customers.
Munich-based TradeLink is taking a tech-first approach to solving the supply chain crisis. Founded in 2020 by Frederic Krahforst and Tobias Nendel, the startup’s platform enables customers to move away from time-cosnuming and inefficient manual spradhseets and email to simplifgie and automated exchanges between all parties in the supply chian. It’s based on a collaborative principle – enhancing communication and how people can work together through the entire chain.
CEO & Co-Founder Frederic Krahforst, explained: “TradeLink was grown out of the feedback provided by people who struggle with logistics operations day in and day out. Logistics and warehouse operations professionals want a solution that fits intuitively, quickly, and pragmatically into their everyday work – which is what we took to heart.”
TradeLink connects all delivery partners – forwarders, suppliers, shippers, and warehouse operators – with just a few clicks and automates the alignment of digital papers, expected delivery time, load information, and communication to improve business results for all participants in the supply chain. While TradeLink’s initial wedge into customers is around efficient coordination of warehouse deliveries, its long-term goal is to create an end-to-end digital collaboration platform for process orchestrations and document management between shippers, warehouses, and carriers.
Michael Shephard, Vice President at Insight Partners, said: “TradeLink has created a digital solution that identifies inefficiencies and process breakdowns in supply chains, saving customers time and money along the way. With its intuitive workflow tooling and analytics targeted at warehouse operators, TradeLink solves a critical communications gap between buyers and other supply chain stakeholders.”
The Munich-based company already has leading brands like Sportscheck, Outfittery, Internetstores, Denner AG (Migros Group), Debatin, or SCHOTT using the platform to manage and orchestrate their delivery coordination.
Oliver Kurzweil, team logistic lead for German retail giant Sportscheck, commented: “With TradeLink, we finally have transparency and automation in the delivery process for all parties involved. Internally, our purchasing and sales departments benefit [by being able to quickly and easily communicate and collaborate with our external 3PL Fiege, suppliers, and other partners in the supply chain] as well as our external 3PL Fiege and our suppliers.”
This new funding will be used to enhance the SaaS platform further, scale sales and marketing activities and deliver on the goal of developing the simplest and most effective platform to collaborate in logistics and supply chains.
