Well-known Sultanate of Oman-based private venture capital firm Phaze Ventures led a successful investment round in a US-based logistics software startup earlier this week.
Houston-based Voyager Portal, a software platform enabling companies to reduce cost, risk, and complexity in their marine supply chain, announced an $8.4 million Series A investment, led by Phaze Ventures.
It comes on the heels of last month’s announcement by Phaze Ventures about the launch and initial close of its $30 million venture capital fund, targeting early-stage startups in MENA, Europe and North America.
Established in 2018, Phaze Ventures is the first private venture capital firm in the Sultanate of Oman, founded to fund early-stage disruptive technology companies from around the globe and accelerate the transformation of the region’s economies.
The new funding to support Voyager Portal comes on the back of unprecedented growth since the company raised $1.5 million in seed money in a round co-led by Phaze Ventures and ATX Ventures in 2019. Since then, revenue has increased 13x from Q3 2020 to Q3 2021 and was up 40 per cent from Q2 2021. Other new investors in Voyager’s Series-A include ScOp Venture Capital and Flexport.
Additionally, Voyager surpassed the $1 billion-mark for freight managed on the platform. Voyager’s customers include manufacturers, traders and shippers in the renewable energy, commodity trading, mining and petrochemicals industries.
“Voyager is changing the way companies are thinking of their global shipping operations,” said Abdullah al Shaksy, co-founder and CEO, Phaze Ventures. “Global supply chains are becoming increasingly complex and strained, and there is an incredible treasure trove of data that organizations are underutilizing in their decision-making process. We believe what Voyager has created for their customers across the globe will revolutionise this space forever.”
“Voyager Portal was created to significantly reduce cost, risk, and complexity when transporting bulk materials around the world,” said Matthew Costello, CEO and co-founder of Voyager. “The last two years have demonstrated just how critical shipping bulk commodities is to global markets – freight rates have increased and port congestion is at an all-time high – accelerating the demand for Voyager’s solution.” Costello continued, “With our Series A funding, we’ll be able to expedite our product roadmap to support an international client base whilst expanding our engineering, development, marketing and sales teams internationally.”
Voyager’s low-code architecture, which allows customers to quickly and easily configure the platform to match their business processes, is a unique differentiator in a market dominated by rigid legacy systems. The platform was also built from the ground up to be a multi-party system, allowing companies to seamlessly collaborate in real time over a single shipment. Working in a unified system allows for all parties to manage, track and analyze the lifecycle of a shipment with greater context and insight.
