Logistics-focused technology platform FourKites has raised $10 million from Japan-based trading and investment firm Mitsui & Co., Ltd., as a part of strategic partnership between the two companies.
Chicago-based FourKites will use the funding to expand its offering in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, the company said in a statement.
In India, the eight-year old company has an engineering headquarter in Chennai, where it has over 250 employees.
Mitsui's investment comes on the back of several strategic investments from companies including FedEx, Zebra Technologies, Volvo Group Venture Capital and Qualcomm Ventures in FourKites.
As a part of the deal, Mitsui also plans to invest its resources to help FourKites in the expansion process, including sales, customer service, operations and product localisation, which will result in a hyper-localised solution for the market. Initially starting with Japan, FourKites will expand its offering across APAC.
The company did not disclose its valuation after the fundraise.
In August, a Techcrunch report said that FourKites had laid off about 60 employees.
Founded in 2014 by Mathew Joseph Elenjickal and Arun Chandrasekaran, FourKites combines real-time data and machine learning to help companies digitise their overall supply chains.
The firm is backed by investors such as August Capital, Hyde Park Venture Partners and Bain Capital Venture. It had last raised $100 million in March 2021 in Series D led by private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners.
Recently, FourKites had raised $30 million in a financing round, part of the expected fundraise of $80 million. This was after it said FedEx made a strategic investment in the company in June 2022.
FourKites says it tracks more than 2.8 million shipments daily across road, rail, ocean, air, parcel and courier. In the APAC region, it currently tracks international shipments in 44 countries and territories across 270 ports and 7000 facilities, and has grown over 91% in terms of customers in the last 12 months.
