• UAE-based supply chain SaaS startup Fero has closed a $1.1 million pre-Series A round from an undisclosed institutional investor and other angel investors. 
• Founded in 2018 by Carolin-Carmen Neubauer, Fero provides logistics enterprises with an Alexa-like software that can listen, understand, talk and message over various messaging platforms to free logistics employees from mundane tasks.
• The new investment will allow Fero to add tech engineers to its team to continue growing its product capabilities, increase its presence in Europe and further work on additional integrations with freight enterprise resource planning.   

Press release: 

Fero, a cloud-based robotic process automation (RPA) and enterprise resource planning (ERP)-products company that has created TiA, the World’s 1st Intelligent Virtual Assistant for Supply Chain, is announcing the successful closure of the fundraising of $1.1 million from a boutique institutional investor and various prominent angel investors. 

Fero provides an ecosystem of Transport ERPs and TiA - Transport Interactive Assistant, a software to free logistics employees from mundane tasks. TiA listens, understands, talks, & messages over various messaging platforms, just like Alexa built for Logistics enterprises.

“The raise is a great validation of the current success and future potential of Fero products and the team,” Carolin-Carmen Neubauer, Fero’s co-founder and COO says. 

Fero, part of the Microsoft Growth X programme and its novel B2B innovation, is already being adopted and in use by marquee clients such as DSV, Gulftainer and Emirates Logistics with customers in GCC, India and the UK, helping operations employees to automate everyday tasks such booking loads, collecting shipment documents and checking on the status of drivers and be left with only having to manage exceptions. “Imagine the scale of orders and new customers you can suddenly handle with a skeleton of a team with zero errors!” Carolin-Carmen remarks adding “the Fero customer acquisition growth figures of above 20% month-on-month speak for themselves.“  

The Fero's ecosystem includes SaaS for First, Last and Mid-Mile Transport Management, Delivery Management and the unique SaaS product of a “Plug-and-Play Uberization" for Road-Freight, called FAST (Freight Aggregation Software for Trucking), all of them come with TiA as well as TiA works on with any other Freight ERP in the market. 

By applying TiA, to the existing Freight ERPs of our clients, we have helped clients, from sectors including distribution, retail and logistics, automate over 2,000,000 interactions – including emails and calls, related to 100,000 automated truck trips end to end from rate exploration until invoicing resulting in combined savings of an estimated $18 MM for Fero clients. 

“Visibility and communication between internal and external parties are critical albeit very difficult as shippers, transporters and freight forwarders use various transport management and delivery management systems. Everyone is tired of new apps so we rely on existing communication tools such as WhatsApp, plus we know that in a fragmented market such as the road freight market where e.g. the top six carriers hold less than 5 per cent market share of a €105 billion market, there will never be unity in the systems in use,” Carolin-Carmen comments. 

The power of the Fero software is the improved optimisation through enhancement of asset allocation with the help of applying machine learning based on a complex set of variables such as driver constraints, vehicle constraints, route constraints, all combined with customer behaviour when allocating and receiving the shipment.  

With its new infusion of capital, the company looks to add tech engineers to its team to continue growing its product capabilities, increase its presence in Europe and further work on additional integrations with Freight ERPs.   

Fero’s  Series A  is targeted for starting to raise in  Q4 2021 / Q1 2022.