Brazilian startup LogComex, focused on solutions for foreign trade through Big Data, announced a $10.3 million Series A round led by Alexia Ventures and Igah, Ventures. Endeavor Scale Up Ventures and the company’s existing investors, such as venture capital funds Invest Tech and Caravela Capital, also participated.
LogComex kicked off in Paranaguá port city, offering solutions for ports, airports, and dryports. Later, it expanded to logistics operators such as freight forwarders, customs brokers, and airlines. Since 2020, it has begun to serve importers and exporters and it currently has over 700 companies connected to its platform.
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With this expertise, the startup intends to invest the newly raised capital on three fronts: expand its operations with importers and exporters, accelerate its internationalization, and launch new solutions for all market segments that have some kind of connection with foreign trade.
Helmuth Hofstatter, CEO and co-founder at LogComex, explains that all companies playing a role in the global trade market face difficulties with the lack of technology and data & intelligence. “There is a large information asymmetry among the different market players, which turns imports and exports into a very complex and inefficient process.”
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Investors Thiago Maluf, managing director at Igah, Ventures, Patrick Arippol, cofounder of Alexia Ventures, and Igor Piquet, managing director at Endeavor Scale Up Ventures, agree: according to them, the startup operates in a gigantic market, but that, curiously, is still in an early stage of digitization. Having consistent data, in this context, is a great competitive differential. And that’s where LogComex comes in.
Carlos Souza, COO and co-founder of LogComex, explains that the success of import and export operations depends on the collaboration of a chain of agents – ports, freight forwarders, insurance companies, financial institutions, among others. And they all need data.
To provide its end-to-end intelligence, LogComex organizes and enhances data from hundreds of different sources, connecting virtually the entire global trade chain. The startup’s product portfolio enables global traders to perform a wide range of data-driven — instead of manual — activities, such as keeping track of the competition, finding new sales prospects, choosing and evaluating suppliers, and researching new potential markets.
Operating since 2016, the startup had a growth of over 300% in revenue in the last year and went from 50 employees in early 2020 to over 200 in August 2021.
