Supply chain startup in the spotlight: InstaFreight

Digital forwarding company InstaFreight was founded by Philipp Ortwein in Berlin, Germany, in June 2016 and currently employs around 30 people. The company sets out to reshape Europe’s fragmented B2B transport market for palletized goods and won the 2017 Eco Performance Award in the startup category, which included EUR10,000 in prize money.

By offering innovative solutions and providing first-class service based on reliability, quality and efficiency, InstaFreight aims to reduce supply chain complexity and to provide customers and carriers with absolute transparency. The company has digitalized its entire process based on state-of-the-art technologies, including a price algorithm which generates a fixed price as soon as the shipment details are entered. This enables customers to book freight transport directly online, cutting out unnecessary intermediaries.

Working with a pool of over 3,000 subcontractors and selected transport networks, InstaFreight already handles online bookings for shipments to/from Germany, Denmark, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands, and the geographical coverage is currently being expanded. In August 2017 Maximilian Schaefer, a former member of the senior management team at logistics service provider TNT, joined InstaFreight as managing director.

In late November 2017, InstaFreight raised EUR8 million in a Series A funding round from a non-disclosed private investment company. According to Philipp Ortwein, the capital injection will be used to further develop the business model to cope with the rapidly increasing transport volumes. In addition to increasing automation, another priority is to further strengthen the data interfaces for customers and partners.