Russia’s Gruzobzor Raises $1M For Its B2B Platform For The Transportation Industry

Gruzobzor, which roughly translates to “cargo overview” in Russian, has announced that it’s raised $1 million from Runa Capital and the startup’s founders. It offers a cloud-based service targeted at the transportation industry to enable carriers, shippers and freight forwarders to share electronic documents and communicate in real-time, therefore increasing efficiency when transporting goods B2B.

In addition to the document sharing and processes element, which Gruzobzor claims can reduce the number of empty trucks on the road, resulting in significant cost benefits, the service includes tools like distance calculators and weather forecasts.

The company is also talking up its potential to take the scalp of legacy players. “Market participants in the trucking sector often have no access to solutions to automate their activities or believe that products are always expensive and only for big corporations”, says CEO and co-founder, Zagir Rashitov, in a statement. By moving the way the transportation industry does business to the cloud, Gruzobzor aims to change this.

To that end, the Russian company counts over 36,000 companies and individuals who are already using the service — both free and paying — while most of its customers are from Russia, the CIS and Eastern Europe.

Monetization comes via a freemium model. Posting freight and trucks is free, but paying customers get additional tools to simplify their workflow, thus, it is claimed, enabling shippers to make more money and cut costs.