dltledgers Founder and CEO Samir Neji
dltledgers, a blockchain-powered cross-border trade digitisation startup based out of Singapore, is in advanced talks to raise US$9 million in Series A round of investment, its Founder and CEO Samir Neji told e27.
The startup is already “very close” to securing US$5 million and aims to wind up the round by August.
Neji, however, declined to share the details of the investors.
dltledgers had previously raised US$2.5 million in pre-Series A round from global VC firm Walden International in July last year.
“We’re very close to raising US$5 million but we’re aiming for US$9 million. While I can’t disclose who the investors are at this point, I can say there are two and they are well-known,” he said. “We’re certain we’ll be able to close by August. But we’re going to keep the round open till September.”
dltledgers will use the capital to be raised to grow its ecosystem of network participants and scale up its sales and marketing teams. Another important and immediate aspect is growing out footprint internationally, particularly North America.
“We’ve already set up offices in India, the UAE, Japan, Australia and New Zealand in the last few months. But since we’ve already set up trade flows and platform users in North America, it’s on our vision board for the immediate future. Product engineering and tech innovation are important,” Neji explained.
dltledgers was founded in 2017 by Neji, a serial technopreneur who has lead four businesses in his career. The concept was born out of his enthusiasm to disrupt global cross-border trade digitisation.
Plug-and-play platform
In a nutshell, dltledgers is a plug-and-play blockchain platform with a focus on “significantly reducing” lead times/delays in cross-border trade/supply chain transactions and increasing operational efficiency, while reducing the overall costs of financing for buyers and sellers.
The startup achieves this through end-to-end digitisation of global supply chain workflows for its clients and their partners, therefore reducing the reliance on paper, phone and e-mail.
In addition to this, it has also created a digital marketplace for clients to negotiate interest rates and financing terms with banks in a secure manner, allowing them to lower their costs of financing by choosing the trade financing solutions which work best for them.
Since 2018, the company claims to have executed more than US$3 billion-worth of physical trade transactions on its platform involving 400-plus traders and 45-plus banks and tertiary partners.
Nearly 4,500 organisations are now collaborating on the dltledgers platform, including traders and producers, banks, logistics providers, inspectors, agents, and more.
“Our platform mainly targets global trading houses and large manufacturers involved in cross-border trade. Furthermore, we offer inter-enterprise workflow digitisation to multiple unconnected parties in any global supply chain to collaborate on a single digital platform,” Neji claimed.
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“In a more niche segment, we also target small/medium enterprises who may need to track provenance in their private trade flows. Along with our target segment, we also establish partnerships with banks/financial institutions to support the financing/security of trade transactions,” he noted.
The firm’s customers include Mitsui, Agrocorp International, Shiseido, Wilmar, Wipro Unza, IFFCO and ANZ Bank.
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Image Credit: dltledgers
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