The COVID-19 outbreak has left a major issue in its wake: disruption to global supply chains. Worker shortages, the lack of components and raw materials, power shortages in China, delays in deliveries, the rise of the costs and prices, border controls, mobility restrictions…the list goes on. These are all factors that exacerbated supply chain bottlenecks in 2021 and revealed the need to move up a gear in terms of digitalisation in 2022 if economies are to recover from the damage

Tim Uy, an expert at Moody’s Analytics declared in a report relayed on CNBC on Oct18th, 2021: “As the global economic recovery continues to gather steam, what is increasingly apparent is how it will be stymied by supply-chain disruptions that are now showing up at every corner.”

The situation is chaotic. Manufacturers and distributors cannot produce as much as they did pre-pandemic and customer demand cannot be met. The French diary Le Monde reports in an article written on October 22th, 2021 on the well-known semiconductor chip shortage. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the demand for electronic devices has increased dramatically due to the rise of remote working and home entertainment. In corporate IT, spending on cloud infrastructure has skyrocketed. Gradually, all the objects in our daily lives are becoming digital. The world has been so greedy for electronic chips that these precious materials are now in short supply, slowing down certain industries such as the automotive industry.

In consequence, freight rates for merchandise coming from China or US – like these semiconductor chips – to Europe have soared, while a shortage of truck drivers has exacerbated the problem of getting goods to their final destinations, and has led to high prices once those products hit store shelves.

In front of such a crisis, in 2022, the wind has turned: investors has rushed into logistics technology, raising the profile of the sector and creating a degree of hype around the space. The logistics companies’ race and efforts to digitise operations to address the world’s supply chain gridlock have attracted big investment funds at a rapid pace, leading to more visibility, capacity planning and less red tape.

Good companies are simply raising much, much more money,” said Julian Counihan, general partner at Schematic Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture-capital firm and early investor in Flock Freight. He adds that it is not easy to raise money, but in case of success, it is possible to raise more in a second round.

KlearNow perfectly illustrates that: the company is a leader in technology in the logistics sector. The smart Logistics as a Service (LaaS) pioneer founded in 2018 and launched in the UK in 2021, last December raised £38M ($50M US) in new capital to transform broken supply chains, simplifying and providing real-time cargo visibility to the customs clearance and drayage processes. KlearNow’s AI-powered platform eases worldwide supply chain disruptions that have left businesses grappling with delays and shortages.

Sam Tyagi, CEO and founder of KlearNow stated that: “This latest round of funding enables us to aggressively accelerate our technology development and deployment, geographical expansion, and talent investments, helping us transform supply chains that power commerce. He added that the company is really excited to have strategic partners and investors with such a knowledge and he was convinced of the powerful impact on global supply chains KlearNow will have thanks to its technology.

Investors were drawn to KlearNow’s platform as it provides tremendous value for the supply chain logistics ecosystem, illustrated by the rapid adoption of the platform by its targets: importers, exporters, transporters, brokers, and freight forwarders stated Ashok Ashok Krishnamurthi, Managing Partner at GreatPoint Ventures.

KlearNow is not the only supply chain tech outfit to have attracted the attention of VC money. In December last year, the Wall Street journal claimed that investors were piling into the sector with the hopes of riding the wave of demand for solutions to supply side constraints. Firms including fulfilment partner ShipBob, digital warehouse Stord Inc and FlockFreight, a platform that connects freight capacity with companies looking to ship, all exceeded $1bn valuations.

After such a challenging two years for the sector, 2022 might be the year that long-standing supply chain efficiencies are finally addressed.

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