Black-Owned ‘OnePort 365’ Lands $5M To Digitize Freight Management

OnePort 365, a platform that claims to solve problems by providing end-to-end digitization of freight management for stakeholders, is building an operating system for cross-border trade in Africa.

It says its platform covers air freight, ocean freight, inland haulage (trucking, barge, and rail), pay-as-you-go warehousing, marine insurance, and customs brokerage. 

Traders can connect with shipping and inland transportation vendors and manage the entire process (from booking to payments), including real-time visibility of their shipments.

When it comes to payments, OnePort 365 claims to aggregate different methods enabled by the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System so traders have access to instant payouts.

CEO Sola-Usidame, who bootstrapped throughout its first year, says that his startup, based in Nigeria and Ghana, cuts booking time from 10 to 14 days to “minutes.” 

Now he’s managed to raise $5million.

The seed round was led by Mobility 54, the VC arm of Toyota Tsusho and CFAO Group. Participating investors include SBI Investment, Flexport, ODX, a Singaporean syndicate fund and other angel investors. Samurai Incubate also followed on after participating in OnePort 365’s previous round.

The new funding will look into how the company can improve its efficiency and lower cross-border trading overhead across the continent.

The company also plans to use the funding to add more people and expand to “three major hubs” across the continent before Q4 2022, reported Techcrunch. Other deployments of capital will go into ramping up its tech and providing trade finance to the shippers.