CargoSense, a Virginia-based smart data and MicroAnalytics Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company focused on supply chain logistics, today announced that it has had a final close on its seed round, bringing total investment proceeds to $2.5 million. Participating in the final close were early stage venture capital firms IrishAngels and Middleburg Capital Development. Existing investors, including Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology, also participated in the round.
CargoSense has built a comprehensive data capture and analytics platform that provides unprecedented insight into supply chain logistics for the pharmaceutical, cold chain, and refrigerated storage industries. The innovative platform goes far beyond temperature monitoring and simple climate excursions to provide complete and historical insights of how transportation providers are handling goods within the supply chain at the individual box and product level.
CargoSense acts as a 'black box' for a customer's supply chain process - recording exactly what a product experiences, including temperature, light, humidity, pressure, shock, and tilt from origin to destination. Customers can flexibly combine these values to form climate ranges for each product they ship including pharmaceuticals, biologics, medical devices, food, and other climate sensitive cargo. Customers can leverage the integrated insights to pinpoint issues in their supply chain to improve product quality, reduce cost and eliminate risk. The CargoSense solution also meets the supply chain monitoring guidelines as required under the European Union's Good Distribution Practice regulations, and is well positioned to service the forthcoming U.S. regulations for the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).
CargoSense enables the sharing of data with supply chain partners, ensuring a single view of the environmental measures captured for a shipment. Providing a collaborative root cause analysis platform, customers can annotate and share comments on captured data, as well as securely upload files and reports with their teams.
'This marks the first true actualization of the Internet of Things (IoT) within the logistics industry,' stated CargoSense CEO Rich Kilmer. 'No other solution in the market can capture this range of product-level data to ensure quality and quickly identify and remove risks. A prescription or drug that has not been kept at the right conditions during transport can create extremely dire consequences.'
'After completing our extensive due diligence process, we feel that CargoSense has the management team, unique product technology and business model to take advantage of this multi-billion dollar pain point in the logistics industry,' remarked Gale Bowman, Managing Director of IrishAngels. 'They are offering a truly unique solution that will drive a fact based quality control process that is already being utilized by significant players in the pharmaceutical and logistics space.'
With the latest funding round, CargoSense plans to accelerate its rapid growth by expanding its sales, marketing and development teams. Additionally, the capital will allow the company to drive new product innovations and customer acquisition activities.
About CargoSense
CargoSense (http://www.cargosense.com) is a big-data and analytics Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company founded to create solutions that optimize logistics networks - in healthcare, food, medical devices and other industries with complex supply chains. The company has created the first collaborative supply chain software that operates using tablet, Web, and mobile devices, collecting data with the newest generation of sensor technologies. Founded by serial entrepreneurs with a history of building successful software services using agile development and customer-focused design, the company is based in Reston, Virginia.
About IrishAngels
IrishAngels (http://irishangels.com/) mission statement is to 'Marry our passion for Notre Dame with our collective entrepreneurial urge and instincts, to find and fund the most promising ND affiliated new ventures resulting in a Chicago based, nationally inspired angel investing brand.' IrishAngels is dedicated to funding high potential startups both in Chicago and across the country in which a founder, Board member, or active investor is a graduate, student, parent, or faculty member at the University of Notre Dame. IrishAngels facilitates entrepreneurial success and exceptional ROI through close advisory relationships with its portfolio companies. The management and operational experience of the collective group as well as the network of connections is an invaluable resource to companies in which the group invests.
About Middleburg Capital Development (MCD)
Middleburg Capital Development (http://middleburgcapitaldevelopment.com/) is a private equity investment firm. They partner with entrepreneurs, growing businesses, private banking groups, university incubation centers, funds, and other private equity groups. MCD is involved with new technologies, data and information sectors, the service sectors, core manufacturing, and natural resources. Their partners and Advisory Board members support interest in global opportunities.