Senegals logistics tech startup Chargel raises $2.5M seed funding

News Summary

  • The startup is rapidly taking off, and now counts some of the world’s largest shipping companies, Maersk and Grimaldi, among its earliest clients.In its next phase of growth, it is opening up its platform to more clients, as it had limited access to 10 companies.
  • We are also looking at expansion to one other Francophone African country,” said Moustapha, who briefly worked as a senior product manager in charge of business solutions at Senegalese unicorn Wave.Chargel plans to expand to an additional country within Francophone Africa.
  • So, we decided to be drivers for a few months to understand how the sector works, its real challenges and where the opportunity was, before building something,” Moustapha told TechCrunch.Chargel, which came out of stealth last year, matches shippers with transporters, digitizing processes that were previously largely offline.
  • The platform also pools together independent transporters, giving them new earning opportunities.“We are actually the ones in the middle because clients contract us and we are responsible for the cargo.
  • Freight demand within Africa is expected to grow 28% by the close of the decade as intra-regional commerce flourishes, driven by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the single largest unrestricted trade region in the world.
  • And that is how their logistics tech startup, Chargel, was born.“We realized that there were so many inefficiencies, and that the logistics sector in Senegal was so fragmented, but we felt that technology could help.
After selling their hospitality tech startup, Teranga, in 2018, Senegalese brothers Moustapha and Alioune Ndoye ventured into the trucking business as they pondered their next move. However, it soon [+3876 chars]