Dray Alliance, a digital drayage marketplace that connects shippers and truckers for short-range delivery of shipping containers between ports and logistics centers, has closed a $10.2 million Series A financing package led by Matrix Partners.
The company also named Sammi Liu as chief operating officer and Lauren Roberts as vice president of sales to lead the company into its next phase. Dray Alliance intends to use the Series A capital to increase automation in its products and scale its hiring in sales, engineering and operations.
With 600 percent growth in 2019, Dray Alliance is bringing automation and greater predictability and transparency to drayage, a specialized local segment of the logistics industry that it said has been underserved by digital technology.
“The rise of e-commerce, accelerated by Amazon Prime, is forcing the logistics industry to a reckoning,” Jake Jolis, a partner at Matrix Partners, said. “In an age of hyper-competition and ever-rising expectations on delivery time and reliability, every inch of the logistics supply chain matters. We have seen the rise of digitally enabled ocean freight forwarding and long-haul trucking, yet port logistics–a $50 billion market–has been stubbornly stuck. Drayage has remained the last bastion of extremely manual, paper-based and inefficient processes in logistics. Dray is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this seismic opportunity.”
As an asset-free marketplace in drayage, Dray’s technology is designed to improve transparency and transaction speed for both sides of the market. This gives shippers greater control in on-time delivery of containers and faster rate quotes, while truckers increase the utilization of their vehicles with a mobile app.
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“We saw an opportunity to transform the way the drayage market works, while making life easier for shippers and truckers,” Steve Wen, CEO of Dray Alliance, said. “Instead of shippers guessing status, location and rate of their containers, Dray Alliance aggregates data from our partners to provide real-time visibility throughout the drayage process. We are helping both shippers and truckers improve efficiency, move containers faster and eliminate friction in the container shipping process.”
Dray Alliance is currently working with more than 50 enterprise customers, including some of the world’s largest containership liners, such as Maersk, CMA-CGM and APL, several major importers, freight forwarders, and third-party logistics providers that are digitizing their supply chains.
Moving Capital also participated in the financing, along with previous investors Craft Ventures, Act One Ventures and Wonder Ventures.