Sanjay Sharma | April 30, 2020
Dear All,
Thank you for your continued support in Roambee’s journey.
2020 began well.
Years of hard work, a successful track record, and the recognition we received helped us secure an additional $15.2 million in Series B funding led by Anchor Group and Comcraft, with participation from Jebsen & Jessen, Telkomsel, and the industrialist Anant Singhania.
We also saw a flurry of accolades from industry peers, winning the 8th Annual Compass Intelligence Award for IoT Enablement Company of the Year for the Enterprise Market, and being named in SDCE’s 100 Top Supply Chain Projects for the third time.
We’ve also seen a significant uptick in new and existing customer growth. We renewed engagements as well as signed up several new clients with the likes of GlaxoSmithKline, Logista, and Douglas in the pharma space, clients that are benefitting immensely from the visibility advantage that we’re providing at this critical time.
We’d also begun some promising engagements with IFCO, one of the largest suppliers of returnable packaging to the food industry in North America, Ineos Americas LLC, the 5th largest chemical company in the world, and Interstate batteries, the first client to leverage our first automated, sensor-enabled, customer-managed inventory replenishment solution.
Just like the rest of the world, we thought we were well on our way to fulfilling our vision enabling predictability in supply chains.
And then the world changed.
With COVID-19 impacting supply chains the world over, the unpredictability went up.
At such a time, our customers, our partners, and industry experts evangelize Roambee as an essential tool to overcome today’s turmoil, and we are working hard to support them.
Roambee is Playing a Critical Role in Mitigating COVID-19 Supply Chain Disruptions
It’s now been a whole month since the World Health Organization designated the current COVID19 outbreak a global pandemic.
Many of our customers across industries like Pharma, Food, Automotive, Consumer Goods, Manufacturing, as well as the 3PL & Logistics space are using Roambee’s live monitoring and automated shipment management and alert systems to mitigate supply chain risks that have been magnified during these exceptional times. Some of the most valuable uses right now include:
- On-road Delivery Planning — Re-routing in-transit or waylaid shipments to the nearest available warehouse or alternate distribution centers.
- In-transit Goods Salvaging — Re-routing condition-sensitive cargo (especially food or pharma) to the nearest available temperature-controlled storage facility or alternate destination.
- Cold Chain Compliance Automation — Using wireless temperature sensors and automated data capture to reduce the need for on-site personnel.
- Live Demand Forecasting — Planning shipments based on live inventory data at various nodes and in transit.
- Monitoring High-value Waylaid Inventory —Keeping an eye on inventory that’s unattended in transit, especially in conditions where the risk of theft is high.
In case you missed it, we hosted an interactive panel discussion to dig into how end-to-end visibility can improve supply chain resilience and recovery during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
We Are Servicing Our Customers Round-the-Clock
Our operations team is working non-stop to ensure that Roambee continues to provide uninterrupted service and supply chain visibility to our customers. We’ve increased our Bee inventory count to adjust for shipping delays and built in sanitizing practices in our operating process. We’re working round the clock at our hubs to ensure device delivery & pickup. Our infrastructure has been re-routed to our BeeCentral support team who are working from home, resolving customer concerns.
How Roambee is Preparing to Support the Supply Chain Industry’s COVID-19 Recovery
Countries are gradually lifting restrictions, and as entire economies enter the recovery phase, everyone is expecting months of demand volatility as well as a major immediate re-distribution of existing stockpiles of consumer goods and other essential items.
As business managers emerge from their homes, they’re going to be greeted by more uncertainty than they’ve known in perhaps the last decade. As several transport companies and airlines teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, companies will be forced to look for new transport partners whose operations, lanes, and modes of transport they aren’t familiar with.
With imminent volatile market and operational conditions, it’s clear now, more than ever, that end-to-end visibility coupled with 24×7 control tower assistance and analytics on the go are key during the COVID-19 lockdown recovery.
Roambee is doing everything that it can right now to support our current as well as future customers.
For starters, we’re offering the BeeCentral service to customers at a discounted rate to ensure that they can take full advantage of a fully managed service they can scarcely do without right now.
We’ve also fast-tracked the development and deployment of our latest analytics tool — Swarm AI.
The whole world has had a rocky start to 2020, and it seems like the coming months are going to have a lot more uncertainty than ever before.
Just like we will beat the Coronavirus pandemic by flattening the curve through data, analytics, and predictions, we will win the logistics & supply chain unpredictability battle using data, analytics, and predictions that come from supply chain monitoring.
Stay safe and stay healthy!
Regards,
Sanjay Sharma,
CEO, Roambee