Frete.com, the largest Brazilian freight platform in Latin America, has just received an investment of US$200 million in an investment round led by Softbank and Tencent. This is almost a decade after its first foray into the world of logistics technologies (logtechs).
Following this new investment, Frete achieves unicorn status by being valued at more than US$1 billion. Other investors participating in this round were BTG Pactual and Valor Capital de Brasil, the investment arm of the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
With this investment Frete plans to drastically increase its number of employees, going from its current 1,300 to 3,500. The company also provides indirect jobs to 615,000 active truck drivers.
The scope of the company is such that it serves 40% of the trucks that operate in Brazil and has around 80,000 users throughout the country.
The company functions as a platform to match freight and transportation companies with truck drivers; like a truck drivers and vehicles on-demand. The purpose is to reduce the fixed costs of trucking companies by outsourcing the service of drivers and eliminating zero-load (or no-load) trips.
In addition to this service, called FreteBras, the company also has FretePago, a financial subsidiary that offers a digital account for secure freight payments; and Cargo X, a division that provides insurance and working capital loans to transportation companies.
Currently Frete.com processes more than US$18,700 million transactions, growing at an annual rate of 90%, and carrying out 1.7 million freight transports in 5,000 Brazilian cities each month.
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