Chennai and Chicago-based supply chain transparency start-up FourKites has successfully raised an investment of $10 million from one of the leading Japanese aggregators, Mitsui & Co. Ltd. The investment took place as a result of the in-process strategic relationship between the two businesses which will help to strengthen the bond between them. Both the companies, FourKites and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. are likely to make their partnership official by the end of this year, according to the start-up.

The Japanese corporation wants to invest more funds to boost the presence of the start-up in APAC. The strategic alliance will initially concentrate on Japan but eventually aim to cover all of APAC. FourKites is a company that was founded by Elenjickal in 2014. The business provides tracking for shipments of over 2.8 million in number across many channels per day. According to the claims made by the company, the start-up has a reach of more than 200 countries and territories along with more than 1,100 clients as well.

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FourKites is a Chennai and Chicago-based supply chain transparency start-up.

Currently, FourKitesis tracking shipments in 44 territories and countries. Over the previous 12 months, the business claims to have seen a 91% increase in new clients and a 241% increase in shipments tracked inside the area. Additionally, FourKites asserts to be present in 7,000 facilities and 270 ports around APAC. John Kenichi Kogiku, the general manager at Mitsui for the digital solutions division of business expressed the company’s excitement to partner with FourKites. he mentioned that this will bring improvement in the supply chain visibility and efficiency for the operations in the wide industry and also all the nations throughout APAC.

Alongside, the founder and CEO of FourKites, Mathew Elenjickal said that the team is thrilled to have Mitsui as its partner in their own powerhouse. Mitsui joins FourKites’ formidable network of strategic investors to join them for the mission to transform global supply chains.

Three months ago, FedEx, a major player in logistics, made a strategic investment in the Chennai-based business. Since FourKites’ visibility solution was integrated into FedEx’s supply chain, the latter had access to the daily data generated by the former for the training of its AI and ML models.

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FourKites and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. are likely to make their partnership official by the end of this year.

The other companies which have also made strategic investments in FourKites other than Mitsui and FedEx are Zebra Technologies, Qualcomm Ventures, Volvo Group Venture Capital AB, and LLC. Overall, the start-up has acquired an amount of $241.5 million in funding to date since 2014.

To close the regulatory gap in India’s logistics and supply chain markets, the government introduced the National Logistics Policy (NLP) earlier this month. In order to increase India’s market competitiveness internationally, the policy also intends to lower logistics costs to single-digit percentage levels.

To help logistics companies adopt digital and scale up, the government also introduced the United Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP) alongside the NLP. Since ULIP’s debut, numerous Indian entrepreneurs and logistics companies have joined. India’s whole road logistics sector is predicted to grow to be a $299 Bn opportunity by 2025.