Dive Brief:

• FourKites on Wednesday raised $35 million in a Series B funding round to facilitate the supply chain platform's geographic and product expansion, according to a press release.
• The platform, founded in 2014, is still considered an "early stage venture" by Crunchbase, yet in the past 12 months, the company has signed on shippers including Unilever and AB InBev, helping it grow its revenue by 400%, according to the company.
• The latest round of funding is the largest yet for the GPS/ELD-enabled tracking platform, bringing its total funds raised to $51.5 million.

Dive Insight:

The goal, FourKites Chief Product Officer Priya Rajagopalan told Supply Chain Dive, is to be the preferred choice for freight visibility, not just in North America, but worldwide.

FourKites plans to use the $35 million to expand its services to South America and the Asia Pacific region. "The complexities of the supply chain don't end in the U.S.," Rajagopalan said. "It's not so much about us choosing to expand geographically," but being available wherever the customer may need visibility.

With clients including Kraft Heinz, Nestlé and Unilever on board, it's clear global expansion is necessary.

Beyond geography, FourKites is also looking to improve its services for all modes of transportation, including ocean, rail and parcel shipping. 

End-to-end visibility is about more than just real-time tracking, Rajagopalan said. "This is a complex supply chain. There's going to be blind spots," but the system's machine learning tools can help catch those blind spots. "That's a key part of what we're using the money for," she said.

But it's not just technology that has helped the startup grow so quickly. Rajagopalan says shippers are facing a "trifecta [of factors], which then makes freight visibility not a 'nice to have,' but a 'must have'." 

First is the increased demand for on-time, in-full (OTIF) or similar policies from retailers that require suppliers to meet delivery windows more accurately. "In order to make my appointment, I need predictive technology," she said. "It's exception management."

The second factor is the electronic logging device (ELD) mandate that went into effect at the end of 2017. As a GPS- and ELD-enabled platform, Rajagopalan says the company is onboarding "thousands of carriers" into the system, which makes it easier to provide the visibility customers demand.

The last trend, of course, is the Amazon Effect. Companies with millions of dollars in freight budgets can no longer afford to not have visibility into their transportation network, raising the demand for products like FourKites'.

At the end of the day, the company belongs to a new class of supply chain solutions providers promising to transform data into action. The new funding should allow the company to dig even deeper and reach wider.