Software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Freightify on Thursday said it has secured $12 million (around Rs 98.3 crore) in a Series A capital raise led by Sequoia Capital India.
The round also saw participation from TMV and Alteria Capital, with existing investors Nordic Eye Venture Capital and Motion Ventures.
The fresh funds will be deployed for product development, geographical expansion, hiring, sales expansion, and brand building.
“We are building out a marketing function that can drive growth as we expand to geographies across the globe,” said Raghavendran Viswanathan, founder and chief executive officer, Freightify.
Founded in 2016 by Viswanathan, Freightify initially started as a marketplace for freight forwarders to search, book and track freight. Subsequently, the company developed a SaaS platform that allows freight forwarders to procure, manage and quote freight prices
In 2021, it had raised $2.5 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Nordic Eye Venture Capital and has cumulatively raised $14.5 million so far.
Freightify claims to have around 200 freight forwarding companies as part of its customer base and a geographical presence across Europe, Australia and key regions in Asia Pacific.
The SaaS sector has emerged as one of the top-funded sectors along with consumer startups and fintech in 2022, according to data from startup intelligence platform Tracxn. As per the latest report by private equity firm Bain homegrown SaaS firms are poised to touch an annual revenue run rate (ARR) of $35 billion by 2027.
Last month, artificial intelligence-powered SaaS platform Actyv.ai, marked the final close of its pre-Series A funding round at $12 million (around Rs 96 crore).
Earlier , SaaS platform Prismforce Inc. secured $13.6 million (about â¹111 crore) in a Series A round led by Sequoia Capital India.
Sequoia Capital India, which has backed startups like Byjus, CRED, Freshworks, Groww, Mamaearth, Pine Labs, Razorpay, Truecaller, and Zomato amongst others led venture capital investments in India in 2022, completing 71 deals as of November 2022 as per data from market analytics platform Venture Intelligence.
The VC firm has been in the news recently due to the financial irregularities reported in the troubled car servicing startup GoMechanic, of which Sequoia owns 26.89% of the startup’s holding entity.