Intelligent transport logistics: Smartlane secures funding

Freigeist Capital invests in Munich-based technology startup Smartlane – BayStartUP prepares financing round.

The Munich-based technology startup Smartlane has successfully closed a second round of financing. The investor is Freigeist Capital, the investment arm of Frank Thelen, Marc Sieberger and Alex Koch. The BayStartUP investor network provided valuable support in the preparation, among other things via the startup financing coaching as well as the BayStartUP Venture Conferences.

The investors from the seed round remain on board, including the family office Ideenschaft Invest GmbH & Co. KG and the Mobility Fund.

Smartlane wants to revolutionise the billion-dollar logistics industry with software based on artificial intelligence. The company offers an all-round solution for logistics processes that automates transport planning and control and makes it many times more efficient and transparent. It enables up to 30% cost savings and up to 90% time savings in scheduling. The software combines scenario-based transport simulation and self-learning optimisation of all transport processes.

Among other things, this optimises vehicle loading and adherence to delivery windows and enables dynamic adjustments to all conditions on the road and at the customer's premises, as well as automating driver and customer communication.

Many transport companies still plan tours, loading and vehicle deployment manually.

This is cost-intensive and inefficient. Smartlane's self-learning and self-optimising software forms the core of the technology of the startup founded in 2015 and enables the end-to-end automation of transport processes as well as the continuous improvement of these processes through so-called transport mining.

With the software, transport companies can now schedule thousands of orders into an optimised daily plan fully automatically within a few minutes and take into account planning parameters such as delivery windows, customer requests, real-time traffic data or loading capacities. With the help of KPI and process analyses as well as comprehensive scenario analyses, they also receive a sound basis for decision-making in order to optimise transport processes strategically and operationally.

The software calculates, for example, a dynamically forecast daily planning of all shipments and collections as well as deployment recommendations for the vehicle fleet. Smartlane can also react quickly to unforeseen events such as traffic jams or staff sickness and reschedule. Customers can thus optimally utilise their vehicles. Data analyses, for example on the traffic situation or the condition of the vehicle, flow into the software in real time. At the same time, the software maintains contact with the vehicles and informs the end customers, i.e. the recipients of a delivery, about the exact delivery time.
time. At the same time, the software maintains contact with the vehicles and informs the end customers, i.e. the recipients of a delivery, about the exact delivery time.

Frank Thelen, Founder and CEO of Freigeist Capital says: 

We became aware of Smartlane through BayStartUP and Smartlane is already the second company from our portfolio to be supported by BayStartUP after air up. We value the partnership with BayStartUP very much and hope to get to know interesting and promising founding teams through the programme in the future as well and, of course, to help the previous joint startups achieve sustainable success and growth.

The three Smartlane founders Mathias Baur, Monja Mühling and Florian Schimandl know each other from traffic research at the Technical University of Munich.

Co-founder Monja Mühling says:

We want to help manage the growing demands for transport and logistics with a simple and intelligent solution. With Smartlane, we support industry companies in reliably ensuring high service quality, increasing turnover, reducing costs and relieving their own employees.

So far, Smartlane's customers include well-known freight forwarders, courier services and retail companies, such as Metro and Fr. Meyer‘s Sohn.

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