Repowr, a collaborative logistics marketplace and digital-leasing platform aiming to bring visibility and value to underused transportation equipment, has closed a $4.2 million seed round.
The round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), the growth and venture arm of Koch Industries Inc., with participation from Perot Jain Alliance and a number of strategic angel investors.
Repowr is a 2021 graduate of the Velocity Accelerator program at Birmingham’s Innovation Depot.
The transportation equipment market has virtually dissipated over the past two years and fleets of all sizes are desperate for additional equipment, specifically trailers. The Repowr marketplace, through its shared-asset visibility and management technology, allows users to book underused trucks and trailers within minutes – a type of accessibility that will be a boon to supply chain operations.
“The amount of underutilized trailers in the supply chain is just mind-blowing and we recognized the opportunity and need to address this problem, which has ramifications across the entire supply chain,” said Patrick Visintainer, CEO of Repowr. “Our job at Repowr is to bring visibility and value to this ‘invisible trailer capacity’ so the assets keep generating revenue for owners and borrowers. These are valuable assets that all fleets – but especially smaller fleets – need, so we set out to introduce a network marketplace with book-it-now capabilities.”
Repowr is working with some of the largest truckload fleets in America to pioneer the world’s first collaborative asset-sharing platform. These early adopters have been equipped with the technology necessary to seamlessly share assets among both internal teams and third-party networks. Users can deploy underused assets to the book-it-now marketplace, where asset owners can optimize trailer pools and reduce supply chain costs.
Repowr sees networks as crucial to the successes of future supply chains. During the peak of the 2020 supply chain crunch, Repowr’s founding team recognized the senseless amount of waste caused by the lack of visibility and collaboration in the commercial equipment space.
“Traditional methods for sourcing equipment capacity are failing trucking companies, which ripples throughout the supply chain and ultimately affects the economy and consumers,” said Spencer Ware, COO of Repowr. “As an industry, we’re overlooking at least $45 billion in underutilized trucks and trailers alone.”
One of Repowr’s upcoming products, the Universal Trailer Network (UTN), will allow its users to set rules and permissions to seamlessly share smart-trailer capacity with minimal human interaction.
Byron Knight, COO and managing director at Koch Disruptive Technologies, said that as a global company with significant operations across the entire supply chain, “we appreciate the unique value proposition Repowr brings.”
“Our investment in Repowr is a vote of confidence in the company’s vision to develop collaborative tools that offer shared visibility and secure chains of custody, giving operators the upper hand in over-the-road transportation,” he said.
(Courtesy of Alabama NewsCenter)
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