Tive, a startup whose platform captures real-world data to inform supply chain decisions, today raised $ 12 million in a venture equity deal. Tive says it’ll invest the funds in product R&D as it looks to expand geographically and hire on new workers.
The pandemic and corresponding rise in online shopping threaten to push supply chains to the breaking point. Early in the COVID-19 crisis, Amazon was forced to restrict the amount of inventory suppliers could send to its warehouses. Ecommerce order volume has increased by 50% compared with 2019, and shipment times for products like furniture more than doubled in March. Moreover, overall U.S. digital sales have jumped by 30%, expediting the online shopping transition by as much as two years.
Tive provides customers across industries like consumer packaged goods, logistics, produce, and retail real-time visibility into the shipment process, including location data and metrics like temperature, shock, light exposure, and humidity. The company’s 5G-ready, non-lithium battery-powered trackers and cloud-based software provide visibility into a shipment’s condition, allowing shippers to create profiles, set custom alerts, configure geofences, and use an API to pull data into existing record-keeping systems.
The Tive platform analyzes shipments’ data and turns it into actionable, real-time insights. It delivers alerts, reports, and tools to help customers understand and optimize supply chains.
Tive’s customers include Alpine Fresh, Crane Worldwide Logistics, Fastly, Aviagen, Hellmann Logistics, and BOA Logistics. One of the world’s largest logistics companies uses the platform to track pharmaceutical shipments across the globe, which Tive notes has taken on newfound importance with COVID-19 vaccine shipping underway, due to the temperature and shelf-life considerations for the front-running vaccines. Two vaccines — from Moderna and Pfizer — must be kept at temperatures below minus 20 degrees Celsius.
“Given the growing demand for Tive’s full line of tracking solutions, it was obvious that now was the time to dramatically expand our ability to meet industry demand,” CEO Krenar Komoni, who cofounded Tive in 2015 with Rob Stevens, said. “Gaining the support of RRE Ventures and Two Sigma Ventures, as well as our current valued investors, means we can leverage their expertise and focus on growing our customer-centric platform. The infusion of growth capital means bringing products to market faster, enhancing our sales and marketing efforts, adding key leadership, and growing our international presence.”
RRE Ventures and Two Sigma Ventures led the series A round announced today, with participation from existing investors NextView Ventures, Hyperplane Ventures, One Way Ventures, Fathom Ventures, and others. It brings Tive’s total raised to date to over $ 16 million.