Nowports is the first digital freight forwarding company in Latin America. In other words, it operates by digitizing processes to provide its customers with real-time information on their shipments. The service offers quick route and rate quotes, shipment tracking, digitized documentation, and easy communication with everyone involved in the operation.
In other words, it is a freight forwarder with “a digital and innovative vision focused on providing its clients with greater visibility and decision-making capabilities,” said the company’s CTO (Chief Technology Officer ) and ORT graduate Santiago García da Rosa, who holds a degree in Computer Science , when they received a $16 million investment in a Series A funding round last July.
The company was founded on the experience in the freight forwarding industry shared by its two co-founders, Maximiliano Casal (a systems engineering graduate from our university) and Alfonso de los Ríos, who met at a bootcamp at Stanford University. According to Casal himself, it was based on that prior knowledge that they identified an opportunity to innovate in the industry in Latin America, and in 2019 they launched Nowports, which quickly began to grow.
In December 2021, the company secured a $60 million Series B funding round, which enabled it to expand into additional Latin American countries, including Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, and Panama, as well as Uruguay.
But on Tuesday, May 24, the company announced the closing of a $150 million Series C funding round, backed by SoftBank Latin America Fund, Tencent, Tiger Global, Broadhaven Ventures, Foundation Capital, Monashees, Base10 Partners, Mouro Capital, and Soma Capital. This transaction brought Nowports’ valuation to over $1 billion (specifically $1.1 billion), thereby making it a new unicorn company.
“With this investment, we aim to open operational offices in cities with significant ties to Latin America, such as Madrid (Spain) and Miami (United States),” says Casal, adding that their biggest challenge is to continue the integration process and create new financial products, thereby enhancing their value proposition and achieving an increasingly stronger market position.
What's the next big goal?
“Expanding our FinTech division, which involves providing capital to our clients so they can import more goods and grow their businesses.”
“Inventory financing is currently available in a couple of countries, but we expect to offer the service at 100% of our offices by the end of the year,” says the co-founder.