Freight News:
Rail technology provider Telegraph secures $10M in Series A funding
Telegraph has secured $10.1 million in Series A funding to enable the rail technology company to expand its software offerings aimed at providing more data visibility via a cloud-based platform.
Investors in this latest round of funding included Crosslink Capital, Construct Capital, 8VC, BoxGroup, Slow Ventures, 9Yards Capital, Motivate VC, Extra Credit Ventures and Flexport.
“We really believe that there’s a unique opportunity to continue to automate, make more efficient [and] streamline a lot of the day-to-day interactions between railroads, shippers, logistic companies, steamship lines, railcar leasing companies and to bring that all together in one place and make it easier for people to do business with railroads — and then in doing so, bring more volume to the overall rail industry and make that truck-to-rail conversion that much easier,” Telegraph co-founder and CEO Harris Ligon told FreightWaves.
The Series A funding follows a $3.2 million seed round led by Construct Capital. Telegraph said it has helped more than 30 clients that are involved in the rail space or touch rail.
As Telegraph continues to grow, the company hopes to expand into the commercial end of operations in addition to serving in the operational space through measuring service performance and cycle time for rail assets, according to Ligon.
“There’s a ton of challenge within the rail network to even find the accurate price for a certain commodity or a certain piece of equipment at any given time. There’s also a big challenge around being able to understand demurrage and accessorials and clearly communicate that across customers [and] across contracts,” Ligon said. “And so we believe that there’s a really unique opportunity to continue to expand in that area.”
One of the company’s larger goals is to bring more data transparency to the rail industry, according to Ligon. By doing so, that will encourage more shippers to use rail.
“Transparency is key to everything that we’re doing, whether it’s providing an understanding of where a rail shipment is, when you’re going to get to where it’s going to go, and more importantly, helping people understand how they can better plan for rail and their procurement cycle,” Ligon said.
“We deeply believe that rails should occupy much more of a procurement calendar than it normally does today. In order to do that, we have to provide certainty and understanding around what those actual costs are going to be so that at the end of the month or the end of the quarter it’s not a surprise. It’s not an argument. It’s not a discussion. It was well known beforehand.
“When we think about Uber Freight and Convoy and J.B. Hunt [developing] an entire suite of APIs around scheduling, we think that there’s a massive opportunity within the rail industry to provide that same level of transparency but not have to wait another 10 years for it.”
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Source: freightwaves - Rail technology provider Telegraph secures $10M in Series A funding
Editor: Joanna Marsh