This startup connects businesses and logistics providers directly

If you’ve ever tried to ship something overseas, you probably know how complicated and expensive it can be. If you work at an ecommerce company, you surely know that logistics in Southeast Asia can be a nightmare. Cargobase is a company operating out of Singapore that aims to streamline the global logistics industry. The site only deals in expedited air freight, and lets goods-producing companies find price quotes from global and local logistics providers on its platform. Director of product Jan van der Burgt says Cargobase eliminates the intermediaries between international cargo services and companies that need to ship goods.

On September 16, the company announced the closure of a seed funding round of US$350,000 from 500 Startups, Ivan Yeo of YSS Capital, and Bukit Timah Capital.

Freight services can transport anything from cars and oil to electronics and textiles. Van der Burgt explains that most companies making shipments around the world are confined to tools like phone, fax, and email when searching for price quotations. Because these tools do not yield instant results, the number of providers a company can get in touch with is limited. As a result, they often look to intermediaries to organize the deals, individuals who in turn mark up shipping prices for their own profit.

“The problem is these intermediaries,” says van der Burgt. “Companies spend US$40 billion per year in this niche and this amount can be reduced by 50 percent if companies would have the right information.”

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Van der Burgt and his fellow co-founder Wiebe Helder met while attending the same university in Amsterdam. Helder moved to Singapore in 2006 after graduation and held multiple staff positions at Royale International Group, a global courier company. During that time, Van der Burgt stayed in Amsterdam, and co-founded two tech companies. The first was a business development software Frigg, and the second was Sproudly, a social platform for parents to document a child’s life moments. In August 2013, the pair linked back up to build Cargobase.

Cargobase’s user interface is pretty straightforward. The site features a dashboard where users can see their active shipment’s progress, and receive private messages from the other party involved in the deal. It lets companies invite multiple logisitics providers to bid on shipments, and lets companies post performance reviews on provider’s profiles.

At the moment, Cargobase does not monetize via a subscription model or premium listings. Instead, it takes a 6 percent cut of every successful transaction between client and provider. In theory, if it costs US$5,000 to make a shipment from Singapore to Los Angeles, Cargobase would collect US$300 from the transaction.

The benefit for logistics providers to join Cargobase is that they get more visibility and direct access to customers, and therefore, more leads on potential business. Van der Burgt says Cargobase is currently running about 80 shipments per month and saving its clients an average of 44 percent on each transaction. He adds that around 20 providers are sending in new price quotations on a daily basis, and Cargobase has more than 200 active registered users.

Cargobase’s current list of provers includes companies like UPS, DB Schenker, CEVA Logistics, and TNT. With a fresh round of funding, the company is looking to scale up its global operation.

Helder says, “We have just attended the Automotive Global Logistics Conference here in Detroit […] to pitch our platform [to] companies like Ford, Chrysler, and GM. All very interested, and a lot of potential business in the pipeline.”