As per the start-up, XCENA’s technology, built on the open Compute Express Link (CXL) standard, expands a computer’s memory beyond traditional CPU limits, apart from executing computation where data resides, reducing latency, energy use and total cost of ownership.

Founded by semiconductor veterans from Samsung and SK Hynix (South Korean semiconductor major), XCENA combines deep hardware expertise with a full-stack software SDK to enable rapid deployment and seamless workload acceleration for hyperscalers, telcos, and research institutions.

In today’s episode of the “Start-up of the Week”, International Finance will talk in detail about XCENA, which, by bridging the gap between compute and memory, is powering a new class of intelligent, efficient, and scalable AI infrastructure.

Addressing AI’s data relay bottleneck
Every prompt, every question asked to ChatGPT, starts a data relay race where information leaves memory, passes through a CPU for preprocessing, travels to a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) for heavy computation, and then makes its way back to the user in the form of “AI-generated replies”.

XCENA sees this as a structural bottleneck, which results in data routing through some of the most expensive and power-intensive chips in the industry on every single user prompt. To solve this, the four-year-old company, with a secondary presence in the United States, has come up with a chip that places compute capabilities much closer to DRAM (Dynamic Random-Access Memory). DRAM is known as the type of volatile computer memory used as the main memory (RAM) in PCs, laptops, and smartphones that temporarily stores data that users’ CPUs need to actively run programs and apps.

XCENA is using DRAM, the fast, short-term memory chips, as the main mechanism enabling routine data operations to be handled near memory without the costly round data trips between CPUs, GPUs, and memory. XCENA was in the news in the first week of June 2026 by raising USD 135 million in a Series B at a valuation of USD 570 million, which brought its total capital raised to USD 185 million.

XCENA CEO Jin Kim co-founded the start-up in 2022 alongside CTO Dohun Kim and CPO Harry Juhyun Kim, veterans of Samsung and SK Hynix, the memory giants also known for supplying chips powering Nvidia’s GPUs.

CPUs and GPUs have both gotten smarter over the decades. Memory never did. XCENA wants to change that. The recent rise in memory prices and related stocks points to a broader shift in AI infrastructure toward memory-centric architectures,” Jin Kim told TechCrunch.

While the chipmaking trio of Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron crossed a trillion-dollar valuation for the first time, further consolidating their hold on the global semiconductor ecosystem, XCENA is taking a different path by putting all of its money on inference, which, as per Kim, “is increasingly becoming a memory scaling problem.”

The World’s First CXL 3.2 Computational Memory
XCENA’s chip, the MX1, connects to the CPU through CXL (Compute Express Link), becoming a dedicated express lane in the process between the processor and memory by processing data before it ever needs to leave the memory module. The breakthrough technology brings compute to the data, not the other way around. As per the start-up, what used to require 10 servers could potentially run on just one.

“While GPUs excel at matrix multiplication — the heavy math behind AI model training — much of the surrounding data orchestration, including preprocessing, KV cache management (the system that stores prior conversation context so a model doesn’t have to reprocess it), and data caching, still runs on CPUs. Our chip handles those tasks directly within the memory module itself,” Kim said.

MX1, the world’s first computational memory controller supporting CXL 3.2, is built to break the memory wall in AI data centres. It integrates up to 2 TB of DDR5 memory with thousands of RISC-V cores for near-data processing, reducing data movement and computation.

workload. MX1 also supports PCIe 6.0 SSD-backed expansion, enabling scalable and cost-efficient memory for large-scale AI workloads. “The company explained its breakthrough product through these following words.

Among the core features of the MX1, we have CXL memory expansion, with the chip enabling memory expansion up to 2 TB via CXL. The functions achieve up to 128 GB/s bandwidth over PCIe 6.0. The chip also maximises system efficiency by reducing unnecessary data movement in AI and HPC (High-Performance Computing) applications.

MX1 also brings “near-data processing” capability, as thousands of RISC-V cores process data near memory, reducing CPU load and latency. The chip has been optimised for data-intensive workloads such as AI inference, RAG, vector databases, and KV cache.

The chip also possesses enhanced RAS (Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability) features like Chipkill, SSD RAID, and ECC for fault recovery and data integrity. These capabilities ensure high availability and serviceability for mission-critical environments like data centres.

MX1’s “memory compression” supports software-based compression and hardware-based decompression by reducing overall cost by allowing more data to be stored and processed in the same physical footprint.

MX1’s scalable architecture, combining DRAM and PCIe 6.0 SSDs, enables petabyte-scale memory by minimising latency while maximising capacity through DRAM caching.

And last but not least, MX1 also provides developer-friendly tools across all layers, including runtime. It offers an integrated software environment optimised for various workloads, including SQL (Structured Query Language), vector processing, and graph analytics.

All set for the mass production stage
As the AI wave becomes the new normal in the tech industry, the demand for memory solutions has surged since the second half of 2025. XCENA is reportedly in touch with several global memory vendors. The company is eyeing the hyperscalers as its ideal customers. While these hyperscalers are spending tens of billions a year on AI infrastructure, XCENA believes, through MX1, even a small gain in memory efficiency will bring hundreds of millions in savings for these companies.

While the flagship product itself has been in the prototype stage, mass production is scheduled to roll off Samsung’s foundry lines by the 2026-end, with the company eyeing revenue flow from 2027 onwards. While neural processing unit (NPU) makers are looking to become the competitors for chipmaking giant Nvidia when it comes to training workloads, XCENA is taking a different but a crucial path altogether: targeting the memory-intensive layer that sits underneath all of the AI chip ecosystem.

It’s not like XCENA doesn’t have rivals. It needs to compete with Nasdaq-listed Astera Labs and Marvell, both working on next-generation memory connectivity. While Marvell is a large, established player, the start-up has thousands of cores. Based on publicly available specifications, Marvell’s approach relies on a handful of general-purpose cores by comparison. So XCENA is looking to win the game here through sheer numbers.

XCENA’s cores are built on RISC-V, an open-source chip design blueprint optimised specifically for data processing. Beyond the cores (tailored as small and efficient beings), XCENA designs its own internal memory hierarchy, interconnect bus, and DRAM controller and research and development activities, which its rivals mostly outsource.

The post Start-up of the Week: XCENA eyes solving AI’s “memory bottleneck” appeared first on International Finance.

The Fourth batch successfully raised its 108 million Series A. Laqua said that by accumulating funding worth USD 268 million to date, Corgi has become Y Combinator’s latest unicorn.

Corgi’s co-founders, Laqua and Emily Yuan, were part of YC’s Spring 2024 batch. The start-up, established in the same year, offers coverage for general liability, cyber liability, tech and AI liability. The venture now wants to use the funding raised from its Series B to expand into more lines of insurance while building a generational company.

Building Thoughtful Insurance Products

According to Corgi, most insurance providers don’t sell their own policies or coverages, which means they also do not pay out their customers’ claims out of the companies’ pockets. This type of insurance is slower because they have to connect with a third-party financial entity to pay out claims. The start-up has disrupted the practice by emerging as an AI-native, full-stack insurance company that creates and sells its own policies, in addition to paying out customers’ claims when an issue arises. These elements, leveraged with AI, allow us to provide cheaper, better, and faster insurance for everyone.

“Our goal is to rebuild the USD 1 trillion-plus insurance industry from the ground up. We’re not just making a company; we’re engineering financial infrastructure for the next hundred years,” the start-up said.

As an AI-native, full-stack insurance company, Corgi has specialised itself in providing insurance to start-ups through scalable packages and customisable coverage solutions.

Every start-up, at its pre-revenue or seed stage, requires basic compliance to hire or lease space. Corgi’s answer to this is “Pre-Seed & Seed”, which addresses expenses related to office leases and initial hiring. This package provides foundational “General Liability and Business Property” coverage to protect against everyday operational risks. Tailored for business founders looking to meet landlord requirements and protect their initial assets while staying lean.

Next is “Series A”, which has been designed for high-growth tech companies. The package, apart from scaling with the start-ups’ funding rounds, also includes Directors & Officers (D&O) Insurance (a requirement for most Series A boards) and Tech E&O / Cyber Liability to satisfy enterprise vendor contracts and SOC 2 compliance standards.

For the growth stage, Corgi’s most comprehensive commercial insurance bundle offers high-limit protection, including Employment Practices Liability (EPLI) for large-scale hiring and fiduciary liability for employee benefit plans. The plan mitigates complex risks across multiple jurisdictions and ensures the companies remain “IPO-ready” with advanced management liability.

The “Custom Package” allows a start-up to tailor its coverage limits and policy types to specific industry risks. Whether the business needs specialised “AI Liability”, “Media Liability”, or specific international coverage, Corgi’s advisors help them build a bespoke risk management strategy that fits their exact contract requirements.

Solutions For Industries

Among its prominent insurance products for industries, let’s start with “Industry for SaaS”, tailored for companies facing digital risks that require software-oriented modern liability coverage. Through the mechanism, SaaS (Software as a Service) can meet insurance requirements in enterprise MSAs (Master Service Agreements), apart from gaining investor trust by providing the protection required for the company’s Series A term sheet and board. The insurance also protects its customers from incidents like system-wide outages, bugs, or implementation failures by reducing the monetary fallout.

For AI start-ups, Corgi’s insurance mechanism provides protection against scenarios like model performance and hallucination (liability for when an LLM provides false, defamatory, or harmful information that causes a third party loss), algorithmic bias (protection against claims of discriminatory outcomes in hiring, lending, or healthcare AI) and training data disputes (legal defence for intellectual property disputes related to the data used to train your proprietary models).

Next in line is “Fintech Insurance”, which blends risks like technology performance, multiple partner and stakeholder expectations, and regulatory scrutiny. A bug in your API prevents users from accessing features, balances, or transactions—partners and customers demand answers fast. Fintechs face constant worries like mistakes in payment routing, reporting, or product configuration, leading to allegations of customer harm or operational losses, with either customers, banks, processors or vendors knocking on companies’ doors with their monetary claims. Corgi acts like a shield in these situations by providing coverage against scenarios like professional liability arising from technology products or services; claims arising due to hacking, ransomware, and data privacy-related incidents; and risks associated with content, advertising, and intellectual property.

Also, “Marketplace Startup Insurance” from Corgi acts as the comprehensive insurance for two-sided marketplaces and platforms by protecting client platforms and their users and ensuring company growth from seed to IPO.

The insurance has three coverage areas: protection for claims involving bodily injury or property damage connected to platform-facilitated transactions, liability allegations tied to screening, verification, onboarding, or moderation workflows and claims tied to outages, ranking changes, listing errors, payment flow issues, or other product failures that impact users.

The post Start-up of the Week: Through tailored products, Corgi powers new businesses appeared first on International Finance.

The legacy mechanisms of the logistics industry are known for having tedious back-office processes and siloed data, along with a lack of operational and financial visibility, factors that as a combination, drain companies’ profits and increases consumer costs. Loop wants to ease up the pressure, through the technology’s helping hand.

Loop’s founders, Matt McKinney and Shaosu Liu, are Uber veterans. In Uber Freight, McKinney tackled the problem of building a new structure for the legacy transportation payment system, while Liu handled the building process of a software that can optimize a network of networks to build a more collaborative supply chain.

The assignments gave the duo a first-hand experience of the “legacy issues” bothering the global supply chain ecosystem, giving them the inspiration to come up with Loop, about which International Finance, in today’s episode of the “Start-up of the Week,” will talk in detail.

Redefining the next-generation supply chains

As per the Loop, enterprises require a more dependable data foundation to sustain high operational performance, free up working capital, and take strategic decisions with confidence. To enable this, the start-up, through its “Logistics Data Platform,” has automated 99% of freight and parcel audits to deliver efficient, accurate outcomes.

Loop stores important supply chain and spend documents (rate tables, manual calculations and invoice) in one platform, before automatically auditing every line-item on the invoice and identifying discrepancies in hours.

Another headache logistics players face is the “black box,” the event in which shipment, after leaving the dock, leaves businesses powerless to prevent delays or manage customer expectations. To address this, Loop, using the “click-to-porch visibility” approach, lets its online platform absorb over 20 billion scans annually across all modes and carriers, standardizing messy data into a single, accurate view.

With a wide range of custom dashboards and reports, logistics players get to track every package in real-time to monitor network velocity, confirm delivery status, and ensure their shipments are moving as promised. Loop’s predictive “at-risk” logic also flags shipments that are stalling, dwelling, or projected to miss their commit date, way before the carrier even reports a delay.

The start-up’s customizable dashboards provide a real-time command center for logistics operations, tracking critical parameters like on-time delivery percentages, carrier service levels, and dwell times.

When it comes to logistics companies securing the best possible terms and rates, Loop prepares them with data-driven insights and veteran carrier intelligence services. The start-up’s “parcel contract optimization” combines deep shipping data analysis with decades of industry expertise to secure better rates and maintains optimal contract performance over time.

Loop’s contract intelligence dashboards provide real-time visibility into a logistics company’s contract performance, breaking down costs by service type, zone, and accessorial charges to reveal optimization opportunities at a glance. Interactive analytics let the business drill down into specific contract terms, track realized versus contracted discounts, and monitor minimum charge utilization to ensure the business is maximizing every negotiated benefit. The start-up claims its contract intelligence and industry expertise delivering up to 50% post-audit savings for logistics players by optimizing their rates.

Loop’s contract intelligence dashboards come equipped with built-in tools, that show the client companies how proposed discount changes will directly impact their real-world financials. The “what-if” scenario modelling allows the businesses to simulate the precise impact of different discount structures or minimum charge adjustments against their historical shipping data. They get to see the potential savings or costs of the proposals, before agreeing to the terms and conditions.

Loop’s “Carrier Invoice Pay” streamlines global AP (accounts payable) process with accurate, seamless freight payments, with flexible (including custodial) options reducing administrative costs and improving working capital. No more of logistics professionals sorting invoices, chasing approvals and answering “where is my money?” calls from carriers, as the start-up takes over these repetitive functions, through its AI-native audit, which guarantees every invoice is 100% accurate before it’s approved. From there, Loop’s flexible payment solutions provide logistics companies the control, flexibility, and automation they want.

A full stack of cutting-edge tech

Loop’s “Control Suite” puts logistics players in command, with tailored policies assisting the industry players to get a real-time visibility into their financial health, network performance, and policy compliance. We are talking about a business automation an audit-related engine, that helps its users to seamlessly review their organizational rules for financial approvals, service-level enforcement and required documentation.

The heart of Loop’s “Control Suite” is the “Control Tower,” an operational and financial intelligence platform, that monitors shipment volumes, spend trends, and compliance performance in real-time, before identifying the root cause behind the failure of the company policies.

Another brilliant piece of Loop’s innovation has been its AI-native platform, “Loop AI,” that has been customised with various AI models and agents, to fix messy logistics data. This approach delivers what legacy systems can’t: comprehensive data capture, leading data quality, and a path to end-to-end automation.

“DUX,” Loop’s another AI-based solution for logistics businesses, uses high-quality data, creating a complete and accurate shipment data, helping supply chain teams to move from reactive exception management to proactive optimization method.

The post Start-up of the Week: Through AI, Loop redefines logistics industry appeared first on International Finance.

Other significant players were Embark Ventures, The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Massachusetts Clean Energy Centre (MassCEC), Safar Partners, Climate Investment and Marathon Petroleum Corporation. The venture will now use the fresh capital to scale its business, apart from financing the deployment of a modular filtration platform into the refining and chemical sectors.

Via Separations’ expertise lies in providing filtration systems designed to lower energy use in industrial separation processes by up to 90%, apart from significantly reducing emissions in industrial processing.

Electrifying Heat-based Separation

“Via Separations is a membrane technology company driving the transition from expensive, energy-intensive thermal separations to efficient, lower-cost filtration. Via is operating at commercial scale, delivering value to industrial customers today with no green premium. Via Separations is a membrane technology company driving the transition from expensive, energy-intensive thermal separations to efficient, lower-cost filtration. Via is operating at commercial scale, delivering value to industrial customers today with no green premium,” the start-up explained itself through these words.

Via electrifies heat-based separation with modular filtration systems that integrate directly with existing industrial equipment, reducing the energy required for chemical separations in the process.

“These thermal separation steps account for roughly 12% of global energy use, driving significant fuel and steam demand across industrial separations. By replacing them with a mechanically driven membrane process, Via’s system can reduce energy use at the separation step by up to 90%, delivering lower operating costs, higher uptime, and a more flexible pathway to energy efficiency and electrification,” Via Separations remarked.

Via Separations’ membrane technology uses up to 90% less energy than traditional evaporation or distillation because it is a physical separation, rather than a thermal process. In the start-up’s language, “these membranes work like a coffee filter or pasta strainer, but for chemicals.”

These materials are made of a unique source called graphene oxide (GO), which is extremely stable in nature, ensuring the membranes withstand high temperature and corrosive process conditions, where typical polymer membranes don’t work at all. Via Separations has already proven the membrane technology at commercial scale in the pulp and paper sector, approaching two years of continuous operation at a Canadian pulp mill. The start-up is now expanding the technology’s deployment into refining and chemicals, with hundreds of millions of dollars of capital projects in the commercial pipeline. In 2025, the company also completed a pilot at a major Gulf Coast refinery.

The Via Ecosystem

Through its filtration systems, the start-up is driving both bottom- and top-line improvements for its industrial customers, reducing energy costs, apart from providing operational flexibility and de-bottlenecking production.

The start-up has tuned its durable graphene oxide membranes to perform challenging industrial separations across markets. The start-up continued, “Complete system integrates Via membranes into customers’ existing processes in a compact footprint. Via systems deliver quality separations while reducing costs, energy, and production bottlenecks.”

A very good example of Via Separations’ industrial innovation has been its first commercial-scale Black Liquor Concentration System (BLCS), which is operational at the International Paper site in Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. The global pulp and paper industry, known for annually producing over 400 million tonnes of paper, packaging, and tissue from wood fibres and recycled materials, faces one challenge: black liquor recovery. We are talking about the most capital and energy-intensive component of a Kraft pulp mill, which burns waste cooking liquor (12%-15% solids) in a specialised boiler to produce energy (steam/electricity) and recover inorganic cooking chemicals.

To address the challenge, Via has created Black Liquor Concentration System (BLCS), which concentrates weak black liquor before evaporation, translating to cost savings and operational benefits for pulp mills.

“Via’s Black Liquor Concentration System (BLCS) displaces steam use in evaporators using a reverse-osmosis-like process to directly remove hot, clean water from weak black liquor (WBL). The compact BLCS integrates into existing mill footprints to concentrate WBL up to 40% solids,” the start-up said.

Via Separations’ efficient concentration process eliminates production bottlenecks and reduces the energy consumption of black liquor concentration by up to 50%. The technology, if widely deployed, will help pulp mills realise additional free cash flow in the millions of dollars per year.

In the petrochemical industry, despite heavy crudes becoming more prevalent, refineries are facing limited capabilities when it comes to processing the fuel due to the size of the vacuum distillation unit (VDU). To solve this, Via filtration system is increasing the VDU capacity, reducing costs and energy consumption while unlocking additional heavy crude processing capacity.

Via’s innovations have been expanding in the chemical manufacturing industry as well. Acid processing is a large market that touches both the chemicals and refining sectors. Knowing the potential, Via is looking to provide on-site processing of sulfuric acid, reducing costs and emissions while enabling recovery of acid-soluble oils (ASOs).

The post Start-up of the Week: Via Separations secures funding to deploy modular filtration appeared first on International Finance.

Commercial mining is not everyone’s cup of tea. Only about three in 1,000 potential deposits end up becoming commercially viable, and even then, it takes years to prove it by drilling core samples. As per Fleet Space, its tech-powered approach can help target drilling operations, reducing decision time from weeks to days.

Fleet Space set up its own constellation of satellites in orbit that use a range of sensors, including electromagnetic and gravity-sensing, to map the subsurface. The start-up feeds that data into its software platform, which can provide a new location for drilling in as little as 48 hours.

The ongoing “Cisco Project” in Quebec believes that it could produce up to 329 million metric tons of lithium oxide in the coming days, with Fleet Space even claiming that the initiative’s results might extend beyond Cisco’s current boundaries, as the start-up predicts the region having “district-scale potential.”

Using Technology To Solve Global Challenges

Established in 2013, Fleet Space is pushing the boundaries of innovation with breakthrough advances in space technology, multiphysics data acquisition, edge computing, and AI.

Exploration today is a data problem. Decades of valuable datasets are trapped in silos or incompatible formats. Fleet Space’s integrated geoscience platform is turning this complexity into clarity by combining historical data and new satellite-enabled geophysics into a single, interoperable source of truth.

The venture is fusing cutting-edge geoscience data into one seamless space-based platform, delivering faster target generation, standardisation of multi-source data, deeper insights, and greater confidence across every stage of mineral exploration, addressing concerns like shortening the time to target and optimising exploration budgets in capital-constrained environments. The solution, named “ExoSphere by Fleet,” is turning mining prospects into drill-ready targets faster, with more precision and reduced uncertainty.

And it has positively disrupted the industry, given the fact that legacy consultants and AI vendors operating in the sector have their own issues: neither their data acquisition is comprehensive, nor can they prove the accuracy of the information. Even the foundational model used by them is a generic one (often a third-party tool or partner product).

Even the surface-level models are off-the-shelf ML libraries trained on limited, non-contextual datasets. Thanks to Fleet Space, its industry partners are now having real-time data acquisition, possessing full ownership and control over new data quality, speed, and frequency, thereby enabling real-time geophysical insights.

“ExoSphere by Fleet” is a unified exploration platform that combines sensing, processing, modelling and artificial intelligence (AI), designed from the ground up into one coherent system. It integrates a growing suite of advanced geophysical methods, each delivering faster, cost-effective and environmentally responsible exploration outcomes. It adapts across scales, from broad district assessments to high-resolution target definition.

Unified Exploration Intelligence

ExoSphere is the first end-to-end solution integrating space-enabled geoscience, real-time data acquisition with on-the-field quality control (QC), and predictive AI drill targeting. It transforms disconnected datasets into decision-ready intelligence, delivering speed, confidence, and clarity across the exploration lifecycle. By fusing geophysics, geochemistry, historical drilling, and AI into a cohesive decision-making system, Fleet Space enables rapid iteration and faster paths to geological insight.

ExoSphere’s lightweight, passive, and low-disturbance tools reduce the need for invasive equipment. This becomes particularly valuable in sensitive ecosystems, remote terrains, or regions where land access must be negotiated or permits are required. In these contexts, speed and a minimal footprint become strategic advantages.

By fusing cutting-edge geophysics, geochemistry, drill results, and AI into a cohesive decision-making system, ExoSphere is reducing delays, increasing resolution, and moving from survey to drill-ready target faster than ever before.

ExoSphere ensures consistent, high-quality data across exploration stages and campaigns. From initial surveys to drill programme integration, all inputs get calibrated, validated, and fed into a single evolving model. This continuity removes data silos, reduces rework, and preserves the integrity of insights over time, the source of truth for decision-ready data.

The ExoSphere Suite

ExoSphere consists of first-of-its-kind wireless Geodes that combine intelligent cloud processing and a network of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. The innovation captures data in real-time and accelerates geophysical data acquisition at a neck-breaking speed.

These advanced sensors also deliver rapid, non-invasive subsurface insights, enabling exploration teams to identify critical resources up to 100 times faster than traditional methods while reducing environmental impact and improving operational efficiency. The solution fuses multiple geophysical methods into a single, standardised 3D subsurface model—clean, real-time, and ready to act on.

AI-driven tool ranks and scores drill targets by integrating geophysics, geochemistry and drill data, removing human bias. Technology combines geophysical and geochemical models with drill data to deliver high-confidence exploration targets; ranked, scored, and ready for action.

ExoSphere’s “Platform” is a connected web portal that combines AI, geophysics, and collaboration to turn exploration data into decisions, fast. It delivers transformative real-time connectivity, allowing users to seamlessly upload, process, and interpret geological and geophysical datasets. By combining AI-assisted tools, predictive modelling, and a collaborative workspace, ExoSphere turns raw data into actionable insights, accelerating informed decision-making.

The Maaden Case Study

Fleet Space works with some of the most complex and ambitious mining portfolios on Earth. Take Maaden (Saudi Arabian Mining Company), for example, which, through the start-up’s assistance, is accelerating its mineral strategy with data-led exploration to match the scale of the USD 2.5 trillion opportunity in the Arabian Shield.

Fleet Space’s next-generation geophysical sensors, which capture natural seismic signals across wide terrain, are helping Maaden to enable wide-area coverage with minimal environmental impact. Satellite connectivity and space telemetry are transmitting data from remote sites in real-time, removing lag and logistics associated with traditional data collection.

The start-up’s “AI Processing Engine,” which builds 3D models of subsurface structures within hours, is providing Maaden with predictive, more accurate, scalable drill targeting insights. The “Edge Processing and QC,” known for validating and filtering data quality in the field before transmission, is ensuring only clean, usable data reaches Maaden’s processing activities. Also, “Digital Data Repository,” by storing, reprocessing and integrating datasets across tenements, is creating long-term exploration intelligence and continuity.

Photo Credits: Fleet Space

The post Start-up of the Week: Fleet Space advances mineral exploration appeared first on International Finance.

According to Lean CEO Hisham Al-Falih, the company wants to increase its product offerings in financial domains such as money transfers, alternative credit, insurance, and pensions. In 2024, the Riyadh-based company secured USD 67.5 million in Series B funding led by Silicon Valley-based venture capital group General Catalyst.

Established in 2019, Lean is building an integration layer on top of the Middle East’s banking infrastructure, helping financial industry players in the region execute their digital transformation goals by leveraging the start-up’s cutting-edge applications.

Supporting The Financial Industry’s Transformation

Taking a digital-heavy route is not an easy task for any financial venture. It comes with its own set of complex challenges, such as infrastructure management. Lean handles this task on behalf of its client banks (and fintech peers) by localising and transforming data on a regional basis. When transforming data from multiple sources across various jurisdictions, Lean provides a single universal plug-and-play API.

In the fintech industry, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) act as the connective tissue, enabling seamless and secure communication between different software systems such as banks, third-party apps, and payment processors. They serve as the backbone of modern financial services, allowing for innovation, efficiency, and a connected ecosystem where new products can be built without starting from scratch.

However, as appealing as APIs may sound, developing them is full of challenges and frustrations. Lean was built specifically to handle these complexities so that fintech players can dedicate their efforts entirely to innovation.

Lean, integrated with a variety of advanced financial apps across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, enables apps on customers’ smartphones to create services that help them build budgets, secure better loan rates, transfer money to friends, and more. These apps then provide powerful experiences for consumers when connected with payments and data from their bank accounts.

The Key Products

The start-up standardises different data formats from various banks into one easily readable format. This structured data helps Lean’s clients build prediction models, risk-scoring algorithms, and much more while reducing the risk of fraud or human error by automatically verifying customers through their account/IBAN (International Bank Account Number) information.

On the customer identity verification front, Lean uses APIs to help banks and fintech ventures capture all customer information with a single API call (the practice of making a solitary request to an API to perform a specific action or retrieve particular data). Financial institutions also get to capture information for all individuals linked to a single bank account.

Lean’s financial insights services categorise transactions using APIs that automatically assign categories based on 16 pre-assigned sections to standardise outputs. A set of API endpoints provides unique insights to help financial institutions simplify and improve their risk-scoring models.

The ultimate goal is to enable financial ventures to go beyond financial data and build more meaningful, business-critical tools, such as in-depth risk-scoring models, recommendation engines, and more.

Solutions Using Data

On KYC, AML (Anti-Money Laundering), and customer onboarding fronts, Lean is helping financial institutions maximise conversions by simplifying and speeding up first-time user experiences on their platforms. The start-up’s clients no longer need to maintain large, budget-heavy onboarding teams.

Functions such as validating customer identities and verifying their financial track records are achieved through a simple integration of Lean’s digital solutions into bank systems. In addition to automatically capturing and extracting all relevant information (such as name, phone number, and address) from customers’ bank accounts, Lean’s matching engine ensures the name provided by a customer matches the account holder to protect against fraud and money laundering.

Credit and risk scoring is another crucial area where Lean’s API-based expertise is proving invaluable, as the start-up helps financial institutions speed up the process of collecting, verifying, and scoring customers’ financial data. The company has focused on two areas: accurate risk profiling and automated income verification.

The “Financial Data API” cleans and standardises crucial customer data for Lean’s clients, while the data insights algorithm identifies and assigns each transaction into one of 16 pre-defined categories. This workflow reduces onboarding time and enables a real-time picture of creditworthiness, thereby boosting customer conversions.

Building meaningful insights from financial data that’s collected, collated, and standardised in a cleaner, simpler way is another area where the financial industry often struggles. Raw banking data is unstructured, and cleaning and standardising it is complex. Managing connections to multiple banks is also time-consuming and costly.

Financial Data API is proving useful here as well, turning streams of transactions from multiple accounts into structured financial data. This not only helps banks and fintech players generate meaningful insights but also helps them act on them and build new value-added services.

Making B2B And C2B Transfers Easy

Bank transfers to digital wallets often require customers to use third-party apps. Additionally, card payments result in high fees for both parties, leading to slow onboarding and lower conversions. To address this, Lean has introduced its fully native in-app payment experience, covering everything from bank connection to payment execution and reconciliation. This friction-free onboarding directly boosts customer conversions, and direct bank transfers eliminate high fees and chargebacks.

The start-up’s “Connect SDK” allows Lean’s clients to build a simple bank connection on their platform that not only captures customer data but also adds themselves as a beneficiary in the customer’s account for payments. The mechanism is fully configurable for all client platforms. From connecting the customer’s bank account to initiating payments, everything happens within a single platform.

E-commerce companies, which often face payment challenges such as cash collection costs, card-processing fees, and settlement delays, are also being supported by Lean to conduct real-time payment settlements through direct bank transfers. This reduces costs for both customers and businesses while lowering delays in order processing.

These businesses can also process customer withdrawal and refund requests with confidence and speed using Lean’s end-to-end bulk payments system, which consolidates all incoming withdrawal and refund requests in one place.

Lean is also helping financial institutions quickly and easily disburse loans to verified customers by digitising the disbursement process, which saves time and money and reduces human error.

While the start-up’s clients can seamlessly disburse multiple loans from a single interface, they can expedite the process further by setting up custom automations for payouts to be processed as they are requested, instead of manually authorising each one.

The post Start-up of the Week: With a proven expertise in API domain, Lean now eyes IPO route appeared first on International Finance.

Kos Stiskin, Finom’s chairman and co-founder, told TechCrunch that the capital infusion “will be used exclusively and only for growth and not for operational expenses or product development.” The latest round was a nontraditional funding one in which General Catalyst will not take any equity. Finom’s core operations, as of May 2025, are generating positive cash flow, with all new investments and funding going directly toward attracting new clients.

In 2025, Finom, primarily a banking business, expanded its offerings beyond digital banking services while making considerable efforts in innovation.

In February, Finom unveiled its “autonomous AI accounting agent” for Europe-based entrepreneurs and freelancers. The start-up has now expanded into direct lending, which incorporates an AI-powered scoring engine. Finom’s credit offering, available in the Netherlands, will be expanded across Europe by the end of 2025.

Expanding Rapidly

Right now, Finom counts over 100,000 businesses across Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy as customers, reporting positive unit economics in all markets. The start-up’s revenue model, which is primarily a subscription-based one, also generates revenue through transaction fees for certain services, apart from offering a competitive cashback programme. As the company expands into the territory of lending, the move has also opened a new revenue stream through interest on credit lines.

As per Stiskin, Finom doubled its annual recurring revenue in 2024 and became EBITDAM (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisation, and marketing) profitable. The chairman and co-founder right now sees Qonto, a Paris-based challenger bank, as his business’s closest rival. Qonto, in 2022, announced a massive 486-million-euro (USD 552 million) Series D funding round. However, Stiskin believes that Finom has a “stronger localisation strategy and more comprehensive product suite.”

Presently, Finom has 505 employees, up 31.5% compared to 2024. Last September, the company named Alessandro Camilotti, former head of finance and analytics EU at Klarna, as its CFO. The venture has so far raised nearly 190 million euro (roughly USD 214 million) since its inception in 2020.

Through Finom, global businesses can conduct corporate payments with no limits, while enjoying unlimited cashback on all card transactions, even the biggest ones, apart from spending and receiving money in 150-plus countries. Companies can open their account fully online in five days to send and get money from anyone, anywhere, while enjoying benefits like lowest exchange rates, fixed and low transaction fees, up to 1% of unlimited cashback, and free in/out SEPA transfers (Single Euro Payments Area, which represents a pan-European network of countries where two cross-border bank accounts can send and receive payments in euros) and direct debits.

Here Are The Key Products

Using Finom’s “Unlimited Cashback” feature, medium and large companies can boost their businesses by maximizing their savings with a tailor-made cashback system, with benefits like up to 1% cashback on all card expenses, up to 200,000 euro in monthly transaction limit for each card, and, finally, unlimited free virtual cards.

Next is “International Transfers,” under which businesses can save, exchange, spend, and receive money like a local everywhere. Under this, 20-plus currencies exchange at great rates under transparent fees. Up to 75% of money gets transferred in 150-plus countries within the same day, saving entrepreneurs’ time and maximising efficiency.

Companies can open accounts within days, not months. The entire process becomes three times faster with a personal manager, allowing clients to instantly exchange over 20 currencies from their phones or desktops.

Also, Finom’s currency exchange feature is known for being three times cheaper than at traditional banks. The exchange rate, claimed as “exceptional” by the start-up, comes at the ratio of +0.5% at the interbank level. The businesses can store money with no commission in any of the 24 currencies available, while sending and receiving funds with a fixed fee of 5 euro.

Entrepreneurs, whether in corporate or enterprise settings, can manage account access and control team expenses through a unified interface using Finom. They can easily issue, top up, or set limits on cards for employees with just a few clicks. Additionally, they can provide either limited or unlimited access to external accountants and generate bulk exports of documents and transaction data.

The “Personal Account Manager” (a human professional) acts as the dedicated helping hand in sorting out international payment subtleties, while carefully checking the money transfer documents before the transaction takes place.

Image Credits: Finom

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Conifer is the brainchild of a handful of engineers who previously worked at Lucid Motors and on Apple’s electric car project (now cancelled Project Titan), with the dream of putting a fresh spin on electric hub motors. The venture recently concluded a USD 20 million seed round from a host of deep tech investors, including True Ventures, MaC Ventures, MFV Partners, and others.

It’s a magnificent feat for the company, given the uncertainties being faced by the automobile sector (due to the 25% import tariffs imposed by United States President Donald Trump and a trade war with China), where even the established players are rethinking their operational game plans.

Knowing More About The Company

“Conifer arrives on the scene as progress in electric motor development seems to be advancing rapidly. Companies like Germany’s DeepDrive and Finland’s Donut Lab are taking novel approaches to making electric motors more efficient, powerful, and affordable. This all comes at a time when batteries, which typically account for a bulk of the cost in an electric vehicle, are still getting cheaper but are not seeing the dramatic price decreases that were evident a decade ago,” reported TechCrunch about the company.

Conifer sees the “physical world” around it becoming more electrified, automated, and efficient in the coming days, and a new class of prime movers is needed. To meet the challenge, the start-up wants to “create something that is sustainable yet simple, performant yet cost-effective.”

“Making these ideal ‘Electric Engines’ is not easy. We need to be cautious of every mm, g, and USD. Both innovation and execution at the highest level is required. That’s why we exist. Our vision is to power 10 billion new applications with our prime movers by 2040,” Conifer added.

Starting with its goal of “creating something that is sustainable yet simple, performant yet cost-effective,” Conifer is, as of now, targeting the small mobility space with its hub motor, which it touts as “drop-in,” meaning customers can replace existing hub motors without any major design changes.

Conifer, backed by deep tech VCs like Z21 Ventures, Higher Life Ventures, True Ventures, and MFV Partners, is going after on- and off-road vehicles with two, three, or four wheels. The company has also found interest from lawnmower and tractor makers. With a handful of global customers, Conifer plans to start shipping production motors later in 2025.

Ankit Somani, one of Conifer’s co-founders, told TechCrunch in an interview that he was frustrated by the lack of investment and innovation in electric motors. While he doesn’t have the same background of working at electric vehicle companies as many of his colleagues, he said he’s followed the space closely as an EV enthusiast.

“There was a lot of investment in the battery technology segment, all the way from cathodes, anodes, electrolytes — every piece of it. But not enough on the powertrain front. So we saw that as an opportunity from a market standpoint that, hey, there’s not enough people who have thought enough about this from the ground up,” Somani said.

By using magnets that are more common, Conifer is planning to localise its supply chain around its manufacturing facilities, apart from highly automating the production lines and making them adaptable so different-sized motors can be built on the same line. The concept is called a “microfactory.”

Somani added that Conifer’s motors are “one to two orders of magnitude” less complex than a car, which should reduce the risk of this approach. The start-up will introduce automation to the manufacturing of certain subsystems instead of trying to automate everything from the start.

The Key Technology

Enabled by Conifer’s patented stators, compact axial flux technology, and a proprietary manufacturing process, the start-up is building the world’s most compact, modular, and cost-effective powertrains to power “everything moving.”

The technology completely removes the rare earth elements from the play (apart from being tariff-free and coming with a localised supply chain), as the powertrains provide power density with widely available ferrite magnets.

Conifer’s “In-Wheel Powertrains” are basically 2.5kW to 12kW in-wheel geared motors in a single housing, decoupled from the wheels. These geared in-wheel hubs allow for high peak torques, apart from coming fully sealed and fitting within the wheel rim of most wheels. These powertrains are versatile and can be utilised across 8”-to-17” wheel (on- and off-road) sizes and applications, while efficiently increasing range by upwards of 10% without any battery changes.

One notable feature of these “In-Wheel Powertrains” is their ability to achieve “Torque Vectoring without Half Shafts.” This innovation allows for more space for passengers, cargo, and battery packs. These geared motors are ideally suited for two-wheelers, three-wheelers, lawnmowers, power tools, and agricultural machinery.

Next, we have “Integrated Controller and VCUs” — 150A to 400A, 48V to 72V DC to AC inverters that pair well with the start-up’s motors. With a single scalable architecture and 80%+ similar parts, the start-up’s 48V and 72V inverters scale easily from 120A RMS peak to 400A RMS peak.

The “Integrated Controller and VCUs” are basically cost-effective combinations, bringing all drive experience-related electronics (brake lights, motor controls, and battery charging/discharging during runtime) under a single platform.

“NEMA Electronically Commutable Motors” stands out as a stackable axial flux technology that allows for shrinking axial length and weight by over 50%, while increasing efficiency in applications like industrial automation, robotics, and medical.

These motors are super compact and lightweight, ensuring a 50% reduction in weight and length. In the age of tariffs and trade wars, enterprises planning to invest in industrial automation and robotics will find these “NEMA Electronically Commutable Motors” to be an option that reduces supply chain concentration (of rare earth minerals) and costs, as Conifer uses cost-effective ferrite magnets to manufacture these engineering wonders.

Image Credits: Conifer

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However, these businesses have a challenging task at their hands: they need to maintain their books, file taxes, and do related accounting work, amid the personnel crunch in the finance and accounting industry. While 75% of CPAs (Certified Public Accountants) are expected to retire in a decade, fewer graduates are choosing the profession because it simply doesn’t pay them as much as their counterparts in fields like technology and finance.

American entrepreneur David Phillips has a solution to the above-mentioned problem: a start-up called Fondo, which since its inception in 2020, has digitised the bookkeeping job for startups and small- and medium-sized businesses. Phillips established the start-up after selling his coding school venture, Hackbright, to Capella University in 2016.

“The four-year-old start-up, which operates on a subscription-based model, has already secured approximately 1,200 customers, reached annual recurring revenue of USD 6 million, and is profitable,” Phillips told TechCrunch, with the venture’s prominent customers being ElevenLabs, Karat, PostHog, Campus, and Limitless AI.

“To date, we have saved our customers over USD 75 million in Delaware Franchise Tax and helped them receive over USD 16 million back from the IRS in tax credits,” Phillips said.

In today’s episode of the “Start-up of the Week,” International Finance will talk about the company in detail.

Putting Tax Credits On Autopilot

Fondo recently raised an oversubscribed USD 7 million seed round led by Money Forward, a Tokyo-based fintech company, with participation from Y Combinator, Motley Fool Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, a16z Scout Fund, Index Ventures Scout Fund, and Twenty Two Ventures. The round valued the company at USD 66 million.

Also, Fondo is not the only company digitising the bookkeeping job. It has rivals in the form of ventures like Pilot, Digits, Finally, and Bench. However, as per Phillips, Fondo differentiates itself by offering an “all-in-one solution” aimed at high-growth start-ups, as he informed the TehCrunch, “Traditionally, founders use separate services for each function, resulting in inefficiencies and a higher risk of errors. Fondo combines these in one platform to simplify financial and tax operations for start-ups.”

As of November 2024, Fondo is using the proceeds earned from the funding round to invest in products and automation. It is also building an AI agent for its internal team and customers, who can use it to extract insights and analysis about their financial statements, accounts, cash flow, and more.

“We’re focused on building a robust product that evolves with the needs of start-ups. This includes expanding our analytics and reporting capabilities, adding integrations with other tools that founders use, and enhancing our tax-saving options. We’re also looking at ways to support startups as they scale internationally, navigating the complexities of global compliance,” Phillips stated.

The “all-in-one accounting platform” for the start-ups is helping these new businesses to get up to USD 500,000 in start-up tax credits. An average Fondo customer gets back USD 21,000 each year, without requiring to meet the strict criteria of having revenue to claim these tax credits.

Among the solutions offered by Fondo, bookkeeping has been the venture’s primary expertise. It is helping the start-ups to identify if they qualify for the R&D Tax Credit and the Employee Retention Tax Credit, before optimising and filing their taxes. In this way, these American businesses are also getting their cash back, with the average amount being USD 21,000 per year.

Fondo takes care of start-ups’ monthly, quarterly, or annual bookkeeping concerns (through packages), with the ventures getting their transactions categorised and reconciled, apart from easily accessing accurate financial reporting. The new entrepreneurs can create customised financial reports effortlessly with Fondo’s “Reporting” feature, to keep stakeholders up to speed. Fondo Reporting ensures the financial data always remains at the fingertips of these business leaders, with intricate details like profit and loss statements and statements of Cash Flows featuring in an organised manner in a balance sheet.

Features Galore

When it comes to taxation and start-ups, Fondo will help such ventures to identify if they qualify for the R&D Tax Credit and the Employee Retention Tax Credit, before helping them to optimise and file their taxes, ensuring cash back for the business leaders. Fondo has become the leading technology platform with experienced accounting, tax, and tax credits expertise. When it comes to R&D Tax Credit, ERC (Earnings Response Coefficient), Corporate Tax Filings and Bookkeeping, Fondo has become “the only place to get it all done.”

Fondo also provides “Global TaxPass,” an annual subscription package, to start-ups with a “Delaware C Corp Parent and Foreign Subsidiary.” Under this service, Fondo takes care of the complexities faced by these start-ups, especially when it comes to filing their US Corporate Taxes (mostly Delaware Franchise Tax, State Corporate Income Tax and Federal Corporate Income Tax) through timely submission of forms 5471, 5472, and FBAR.

Take Fondo’s role in simplifying Delaware Franchise Tax (the annual USD 300.00 tax paid by all domestic and foreign limited liability companies, limited partnerships, and general partnerships formed or registered in the American state of Delaware) submissions for example. The tax bills which the start-ups receive from Delware state authorities get calculated through the “Authorised Shares Method.” There are chances that entrepreneurs will end up overpaying the tax amount, if they don’t use the “Assumed Par Value Capital Method” to calculate the exact ratio. Fondo takes over this crucial function at the exchange of just USD 1 or free of cost.

When it comes to creating customised financial reports effortlessly, “Fondo Reporting” helps entrepreneurs to generate such comprehensive reports with just a few clicks, while tailoring them to accommodate specific details like executive summary, profit and loss statement, runway and balance sheet, which helps the investors, advisors and board members to get a clear-cut picture about a start-up’s financial health.

The Road Ahead

Fondo is helping start-ups to comply with the Corporate Transparency Act and Beneficial Ownership requirements. As we know, the BOI (Beneficial Ownership Information) report is something which start-ups with 20 or fewer full-time employees, along with sales figures less than USD 5 million, need to file mandatorily. If the entrepreneur owns or controls 25% or more of the company, he/she also comes under the tax ambit.

Failing so will result in the person being subject to civil penalties of up to USD 500 for each day that the violation continues. The entrepreneur may also have to face criminal penalties of up to two years imprisonment and a fine of up to USD 10,000. Filing the BOI report also requires correcting and updating previously reported beneficial ownership information. Given the complexity of the procedure, most early-stage start-up owners require expert help to ride through things.

That’s where Fondo steps in by breaking down the complex procedure into three simple stages: asking the start-up owners a few questions and letting them upload the required documents, reviewing the submitted information and notifying the entrepreneurs, in case the person needs to provide anything else and in the final stage, filing the required information with the United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and letting the concerned entrepreneur know whether the details have been accepted.

Since 2020, Fondo has been serving approximately 1,200 customers, apart from achieving an annual recurring revenue of USD 6 million, all while maintaining profitability. The company claims to have saved its clients over USD 75 million in Delaware Franchise Tax and recovered USD 16 million in tax credits from the IRS.

While new businesses continue emerging in the world’s largest economy, Fondo will be mitigating the growing accountant shortage with AI-powered accessible and scalable bookkeeping solutions, thereby helping entrepreneurs to worry less about navigating the complex financial requirements, especially on the compliance front.

The post Start-up of the Week: With AI-powered bookkeeping tools, Fondo is addressing ‘American Accountant Shortage’ appeared first on International Finance.

Locad’s tech platform syncs inventory across online channels and organises end-to-end order fulfilment through its reliable network of warehouses and carriers across the Asia Pacific. Through this, brands and merchants get a geographically distributed warehousing infrastructure that allows them to stock goods closer to customers, enabling faster delivery at lower cost.

With an operational presence in Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Australia, Indonesia and China, Locad has completed the milestone of serving more than 300 brands as of now, as the venture synchronises inventory across sales channels and coordinates end-to-end order fulfilment, from storage to delivery, through a network of warehouses and shipping partners. The start-up was in the news in November 2024, by raising USD 9 million, in its bid to expand in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

A Start-up With Loads Of Opportunities

During the COVID-19 pandemic, online shopping activities saw a solid surge, thereby necessitating robust logistics services. The use of AI-powered tools in e-commerce services, among other solutions to address the challenge, has also attracted investments from businesses looking to optimise operations and save costs. Locad’s goal is clear here: to provide a platform rich with AI-driven features and better analytics, for addressing demand and inventory-related concerns in a seamless manner.

Among the key services provided by the start-up, let’s start with the flagship one called “Fulfilment,” which is helping 21st century e-commerce ventures through its omni-channel fulfilment solution. With strategically located warehouses across the globe, Locad, as a B2B fulfilment partner, prevents supply chain disruptions and helps its partners gain a competitive advantage by receiving, storing, and packaging items for further transit.

Locad acts as a distributor in moving bulk orders of products along the partner’s supply chain to other fulfilment centres, factories, or customer addresses, thereby offering value-added services to help streamline and grow these businesses as part of an extended partnership.

Locad’s multi-channel fulfilment capabilities help the partner brands keep up with shoppers’ expectations, by connecting storefronts (Shopify, Amazon, Ebay, Shopee, and Lazada), managing inventory, and easily fulfilling orders from various channels, without any extra cost and labour. The Locad Dashboard also gives these e-commerce businesses consolidated visibility, by managing their inventory and fulfilment process across channels with ease.

The dashboard provides the partner businesses features like inventory and shipment management, expedited pick, pack, and ship process, last-mile carrier management, multi-marketplace integration, reduced errors and turnaround time, apart from helping e-commerce businesses to understand evolving industry trends and align their business needs as per the that, by connecting their marketplaces with the start-up’s pre-built integrations.

Knowing the fact that the storage of an e-commerce brand dictates its capabilities to accept orders (playing a crucial role in the seamless flow of packages through the fulfilment process), Locad also offers warehousing storage services to its partner businesses, allowing the latter to store inventory in strategically located warehouses across the globe. The clients can efficiently manage inventory levels to meet customer demand, apart from reducing transportation costs by positioning inventory closer to customers.

With “Locad Logistics Engine,” brands can effectively integrate the start-up’s storage and dashboard for real-time inventory updates across marketplaces. This ensures transparent availability and helps in avoiding out-of-stock orders, while keeping a check on inventory wastage. Merchants also get accurate order forecasts, paramount for resource allocation necessary to support the fulfilment of orders to keep up with marketplace and customer expectations.

Expedited product shipping, in a timely and efficient manner, becomes a critical success recipe for any e-commerce brand. Locad steps in here by coordinating with carriers, and negotiating rates, to cut costs and speed up delivery times. With real-time tracking, businesses and customers can monitor shipments on the Locad Logistics Engine. Built to deliver accuracy and reliability in the fulfilment process, The start-up’s “Shipping Engine” seamlessly integrates with its warehouse operations, and carrier networks to facilitate effective movement of the parcel.

Through Locad’s help, e-commerce businesses handpick their preferred shipping carrier, set specific allocation rules to govern order fulfilment, and specify pickup times that work best for their operations. They also keep a close eye on key metrics like order status, sales volume, and revenue, spot potential issues and promptly initiate remedial measures, all from a single, comprehensive dashboard, making data analysis simpler and faster and most importantly, ensuring smooth and continuous operation for e-commerce businesses.

“Locad Cross Border” helps ecommerce businesses to maximise their business growth beyond borders, by availing tailored solutions at competitive rates. The start-up’s freight service (via air and sea) manages every aspect of transportation right from customs clearance to destination handling to “Locad Warehouse.” To sweeten things up, the start-up, through its “Value Added Services,” helps brands and products get registered for selling on Local marketplaces.

Rewriting Logistics Industry Rulebook

During peak seasons, high order volumes daily get taken care of by Locad’s effective inventory management across multiple warehouses, which in turn reduces fulfilment time and increases customer satisfaction. All these e-commerce companies need to do is integrate Locad’s enterprise fulfilment solutions into their existing supply chains. Locad’s effective Management Systems will then empower these businesses’ operation control and optimisation tools, apart from streamlining last-mile carrier management solutions.

Any large e-commerce enterprise constantly seeks solutions to navigate fluctuating demand without compromising efficiency or incurring excessive costs. Manual inventory overview doesn’t work here, as it leads to errors in warehouse staffing, thus losing out on the order volume. Another worry is a lack of scalable fulfilment, which can lead to a heavy cost burden concerning items damaged/lost or orders not catered.

Locad’s automated inventory and warehouse management for adaptable staffing takes care of these issues, by ensuring accurate fulfilment and helping businesses embrace scalability and adapt to fluctuations in demand without any supply chain disruptions. It ensures distributed fulfilment, as inventory gets stored across multiple locations, strategically positioning products closer to customers. By decentralising inventory storage, brands can leverage a network of warehouses located in key geographic regions.

Enterprise brands deploy effective management of inventory levels to ensure supply and demand, while minimising costs and maximising operational efficiency. With the rising demand, brands partner with fulfilment players to analyse demand patterns to determine the optimal levels of inventory to keep on hand.

However, they often face problems like frequent stockouts, that lead to heavy business impact in terms of lost sales, apart from poor visibility on inventory tracking or marketplace performance to make effective stocking decisions. Locad again solves this by optimising the inventory, preventing stockouts and reducing inventory wastage with the start-up’s inventory management systems that keep the users informed.

Enterprise brands are built by the loyalty and satisfaction of their customers, making it crucial for them to prioritise exceptional after-sales experiences. Fast shipping plays a pivotal role in this regard, serving as a benchmark of customer satisfaction in today’s e-commerce landscape. Enterprise brands are prioritising swift order fulfilment and seeking logistics partners who can aid this vision. Locad steps once again in this domain by increasing repeat sales thus driving long-term revenue growth, along with establishing strong brand loyalty and trust with effective and fast shipping options through Locad’s carrier management.

A Promising Road Ahead

The start-up is also empowering SMEs (small and medium enterprises) with seamless fulfilment solutions, apart from enabling frictionless e-commerce for brands and merchants across every possible sales channel. The “Pick-Pack-Ship” process is streamlining and optimising fulfilment effortlessly by gaining full control over inventory management and tracking, order processing, and workflow management. The partner businesses are enjoying the market edge over their rivals, by getting complete visibility across their supply chain from a single view dashboard.

When it comes to exporting goods, Locad is helping e-commerce businesses to achieve cost savings via optimised routes, reduced fuel consumption, and fewer delivery errors, contributing to improved profitability of these brands. The start-up’s “Multiple Carrier Integration” is ensuring the most optimised version of the fulfilment process (for partner brands) with Locad’s “Last Mile Capabilities.” From strategic route optimisation to selecting the ideal carrier, Locad is making lives easier.

Within just five years of its inception, Locad has truly become “the logistics engine,” opening up a host of possibilities in front of the e-commerce brands with a cloud supply chain to grow their omnichannel business.

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