SXSW Startups: CargoX
The Forrest Four-Cast: February 19, 2019
Fifty diverse startups will aim to impress a panel of judges and a live audience with their skills, creativity and innovation at SXSW Pitch Presented by Cyndx. Winners in 10 categories will be announced at the Pitch Award Ceremony at 6:30 pm Sunday, March 10, at the Hilton Austin.
A finalist in Transportation and Delivery, which will pitch at 9:30 am Saturday, March 9, CargoX is reshaping the future of global trade with the world’s first blockchain-based Bill of Lading solution. It is an independent supplier of the Smart B/L™ solution, which provides an extremely fast, safe, reliable, and cost-effective way to process Bills of Lading anywhere in the world.
CargoX has developed a decentralized platform based on the Ethereum network, and their Blockchain Document Transaction System (BDTS) technology, and it has a pipeline of future products for the supply chain industry — among them the Smart L/C and other trade finance solutions, and Smart Air Waybills for the air freight industry.
CEO Stefan Kuman answered some questions about his company.
What is your competitive advantage?
Currently our company can be described as a sexy digital courier service for important business documents, but we are building a logistics platform for ocean, air, and land shipping. Our blockchain document transaction system (BDTS) technology can really be implemented wherever transparent document transactions are needed and where document ownership is of great importance.
What are your goals for CargoX in 2019?
We will finish developing our blockchain-based Smart Letter of Credit and extend our CargoX platform for air freight logistics. We are one step away from being approved by the IGP&I protection and insurance club and with that we are becoming the first company in history with an IGP&I-approved blockchain B/L.
We are one of the few blockchain projects in the shipping industry with a working solution — and we are already building a strong network of partners and customers. At the same time, we are looking for strategic partners and investors to help us maximize our market presence and adoption.
When you won an IRU World Congress Startup competition award, Boris Blanche, Managing Director of IRU, called out CargoX for its “viability and invention,” in other words, you maintain a realistic, yet disruptive, model. Tell us a little bit about the CargoX team works toward that.
The core of our team is made up of seasoned veterans from the shipping industry. We all know not only the pains, but also the dynamics of the shipping business and how it accepts change.
Our team is made up of complementary people — I have a long history in the regional freight forwarder business office at the international giant Kuehne + Nagel. Igor Jakomin, Ph.D., our COO, previously managed several logistics companies, and he has also been a secretary to the minister of transportation and a professor at the Faculty of Maritime studies. We are proud of Patrick Vlacic, our legal adviser, who is a practicing lawyer with his own law office, working foremost on transport (maritime, air, rail, and road) and insurance disputes, an associate professor on the Faculty of Maritime and Transportation Studies of the University of Ljubljana, as well as on the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, and he was the Minister of Transportation of the Republic of Slovenia.
In December, CargoX secured partnerships with both Global Cargo Alliance and ConsolFreight. How do you determine if an organization is a good fit for CargoX?
Partnerships are an important pillar of our business development, because they can help us penetrate the market at a faster pace. So we evaluate their potential, especially their tech-savvyness, their focus on new technologies, and their drive to disrupt certain processes that should have been made history a long time ago due to their inordinate reliance on paper.
Has CargoX been involved with other pitch events and/or tech conference before?
We attended the International Road Transport Union Startup Competition, where we won out of 77 competing startups. For us that was an amazing achievement, and we loved the process. The mentors there gave us good insight into the process of pitching, what to do and what not to do.
CargoX is based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Tell us about the startup ecosystem there.
Ljubljana really is the most beautiful city in the world, offering quick trips to the mountains or the seaside. The startup community and ecosystem is developed to a certain stage that does not currently provide long shots, which are possible in larger cities with better VC and investors background.
But, we jumped that hurdle successfully last year, when we presented our idea to the world through an ICO platform, where we raised our seed capital to make it happen. It did not matter whether we were doing it from Ljubljana, Hong Kong, or any place in the world.
How and when did your team come together?
We started drafting the CargoX idea in August 2017, out of the desire to simplify the paper-plagued world of Bill of Lading documents. Before that, I put together a team of experts from IT and logistics to create the concept of a transparent, user-friendly, and very fast container shipping platform called 45HC, which is now alive and well.
Which tech trend is your team most excited about?
We all love logistics, so we want to see the public blockchain computer to start managing and optimizing global logistics. It will be a long process, and we are glad to contribute at least one important piece!
What do you enjoy most and least about the startup experience?
When you’re working in a startup, it is hard to find the right work/life balance. Many entrepreneurs confirm that the drive of innovating and making their idea shine is just too powerful to let go of. That is why one has to be surrounded by a good family and social circle, which makes it possible to truly unwind and jump off the fast train, at least for a little while every now and then.
Look for more interviews with other SXSW Pitch finalists in this space between now and March.
Click here to see all 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2019, along with the links to their interviews on Medium.
Also, if you are an entrepreneur, check out all the cool panels and presentations in the Entrepreneurship and Startups Track, which runs March 8–12 at SXSW.
Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, the world’s most unique gathering of creative professionals. He also tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often cover tech-related trends; other times they focus on books, pop culture, sports and other current events.
