Maritime data startup Windward lands a $10.8M windfall
Windward, an Israeli-based maritime data analytics startup has just raised $10.8 million funding in a Series B round led by Horizons Ventures, with participation from Series A investor Aleph and others.
The company says it will use the new funds to build what it claims will be the largest and most comprehensive martime data analytics platform the world has ever seen. It further says it plans to make its insights accessible to anyone who sails the seven seas, with a solution for the financial sector slated for a late 2015 launch.
Windward‘s main offering is a product called MARINT, which tracks vessels across the oceans using commercial satellites. MARINT is already being used by numerous law enforcement agencies around the world, in order to identify threats and criminal activity on the seas. Using its fresh round of money, Windward wants to “expand the capabilities” of MARINT, and will also release a new product called FORESEA, a financial markets solution. FORESEA, the first vertical expansion of Windward’s underlying technology, is currently in the beta testing phase, and gives stock market investors and traders with access to “critical insights” and “untapped market opportunities”.
FORESEA is a bit of an unknown quantity right now, but MARINT has already been making waves around the world. According to Windward’s CEO and Co-founder Ami Daniel, the idea for MARINT came after he realized there was a ton of maritime-related data out there regarding shipping activity, but no platform to aggregate all of its. But although MARINT was established primarily to assist law enforcement agencies, its insights also come in handy for other people too.
“As the company evolved, we realized that the potential applications of real maritime visibility were far more wide-reaching than just security and intelligence, and that our data could bring huge value across the ecosystem, from financial markets to global supply chains, international trading patterns, and more,” Daniel told TechCrunch.
Daniel gave an example of this more “creative” usage of MARINT’s data, explaining how the platform can reveal how much oil is currently in transit, being shipped around the world at any given time. MARINT’s data often differs from official reports, and such insights that can give oil traders and other oil market watchers a big advantage when trying to guess how prices will fluctuate.
Image credit: ThePixelman via Pixabay.com
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