Supply chain startup Tramés bags seed money to fuel its expansion plans

Tramés, a Singapore-based supply chain startup, announced that it raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round led by Singapore family office Kamet Capital Partners.

The fresh capital will be mainly used to develop its blockchain technology, which Tramés CEO and co-founder Kevin Lim says will become a core strategic advantage for the company to drive adoption. The rest of the funds will go toward building the team and further developing its product.

Bringing together a fragmented market

As one of the most fragmented industries in the world, the supply chain business involves different parties, from carriers and freight forwarders to custom brokers.

“If you look at the current state of the international trade and transportation sector, it has been plagued with a lot of manual processes and a lot of fragmented stakeholders for the workforce,” Lim told Tech in Asia.

One cross-border shipment may involve 20 people with 200 different touchpoints, on top of numerous emails, paper documents, and phone calls. The highly manual, paper-based, and fragmented ecosystem results in large shipping administrative costs, he explained.

To help address the problem, Lim launched Tramés to bring together players – who traditionally had been working in their own fragmented ecosystems – on a platform where information and documentation can be updated in real time.

Tramés co-founders (from left): chief supply chain officer Ivan Seow, CEO Kevin Lim, and chief technology officer Alok Rajiv / Photo credit: Tramés

Founded in 2019, the end-to-end supply chain orchestration technology startup aims to create a streamlined and unified workflow for shippers and their logistics partners.

Its key features include a blockchain-enabled document repository that facilitates collaborative drafting and confirmation of shipping documents, thereby convening stakeholders and other partners onto a single platform and reducing paperwork. It effectively minimizes the number of manual touchpoints in the supply chain.

Big market

“Increasingly, there has been growing demand for businesses to digitize their supply chains and increase operational efficiency,” said the company.

According to a report by research firm Gartner, at least half of the world’s largest global companies will be using AI, advanced analytics, and the internet of things (IoT) in their supply chain operations by 2023.

Lim said that the transportation management system space is currently valued at around US$22 billion globally. While Tramés is focused on the Asian market, it is also targeting users across the globe since it works with large multinational companies.

Lim declined to disclose the price range for the company’s services but noted that they’re looking at about a 30% improvement in productivity for shippers, traders, and consigners, which is the core metric for the company.

Tramés currently serves around eight organizations, including one multinational corporation. It is also looking to onboard a Japanese conglomerate in Q4 2020.

Expansion on the horizon