Tech startup Expedock, one of the portfolio companies under Kickstart Ventures, Inc., has raised a total of $17.5 million— including $13.5 million in Series A funding and a $4-million seed money— for the modernization of its freight forwarding process and the reduction of inefficiencies.

The funding round was led by global software investor Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors Neo and Pear and executives from Salesforce, Meta, eBay, Clearmetal, and Project44, among others. 

“Insight’s bread and butter is software companies driving transformative change in their industries, and that’s exactly what Expedock is doing in the international freight industry,” said Connor Guess, Senior Associate at Insight Partners, who is joining Expedock’s Board of Directors. 

The amount is intended for the expansion of Expedock’s team so that supply chain businesses could further understand their data more efficiently at scale. Having the right automation partner will drive efficiency and profitability, reduce labor costs and help the industry keep up with today’s global shipper. 

"Expedock is reinventing how supply chain businesses are able to harness their own data. Given our 600% growth this past year, we are going to do even better by bringing on engineers to expand our use cases and our account executives to support more customers,” said King Alandy Dy, Expedock Chief Executive Officer.

Dy is an engineering graduate and former researcher from Stanford University who has brought together his passion for both logistics and technology through Expedock.

As a leading innovator in the international freight software industry, Expedock uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to transform paper documents into data, quickly classify them and bring them into existing freight forwarder tools. 

Automating invoices and statements of account ensures on-time payment to vendors while bringing accurate visibility to margins, allowing supply chain experts to focus on moving goods. 

“The global supply chain has been under crisis since the pandemic started, a situation felt globally, and further exacerbated by the current geopolitical conflict. Expedock helps alleviate the problem by transforming paper forms into usable digital data, reducing the risk of error, and improving performance across the supply chain ecosystem,” said Minette Navarrete, Kickstart President. “Kickstart is thrilled to be an early investor in Expedock’s mission.”

Expedock works with some of the largest brands in the global supply chain, including Wayfair, ClearFreight, JUSDA, and Ascent, a subsidiary of Roadrunner Freight. It is supported by ZEBOX, CMA CGM’s technology accelerator, which helps cutting-edge technology roll out within the organization. 

“Expedock helped us gain visibility on our margins upon billing and pay our vendors on time. We previously had a rolling backlog of 3 weeks for invoice entry and audit. With Expedock, we no longer lose trucking capacity due to late vendor payments.” said Jack Chang from JUSDA, which handles logistics for Foxconn, Apple, Samsung, Sharp, Nokia and Cisco.

Kickstart, a wholly-owned corporate venture capital firm of Globe, manages the Philippines’ largest technology venture capital funds. It has funded early- to growth-stage tech startups globally, including those in major innovation hubs such as Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Canada, USA, and Israel.