OnePort 365, based in Nigeria, has raised $5 million in seed capital to accelerate the end-to-end digitization of freight management in Africa and expand into new markets across the continent.

Mobility 54 (the venture capital arm of Toyota Tsusho and CFAO Group) led the seed fundraising round, which included participation from SBI Investment, Flexport, ODX, a Singaporean syndicate fund, and other strategic angel investors. Samurai Incubate also made a follow-on investment following its participation in the prior round.

“We are super excited to have these investors onboard to support our mission to optimize cross-border trading across the continent. With new regulations like the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement creating the potential for a new era of trade on the continent, we want to make it easier for traders to maximise the opportunity,” Hio Sola-Usidame, CEO and founder of OnePort 365 said. 

With this additional capital, OnePort 365 is well positioned to further improve efficiency and cut costs in cross-border trading across the continent, as well as to provide a variety of new services that will boost overall profitability.

Why The Investors Invested

Investment into OnePort 365 by Mobility 54 was strategic. Mobility 54 intends to pursue the following three areas of partnership with OnePort in order to continue contributing to Africa’s logistics sector. The first is to assist OnePort in expanding geographically into additional African countries. OnePort intends to grow into South Africa, Kenya, and French-speaking West Africa, among other countries with a high amount of cross-border commerce. Mobility 54 will fully support the effort by leveraging the network of the TTC/CFAO alliance in all 54 African countries. The second objective is to encourage collaboration with Sendy and Kamtar, with the goal of developing a digitally integrated logistics solution for both cross-border and domestic transit. Finally, according to Mobility 54, OnePort will be connected to other locations outside of Africa, where Mobility 54 will participate in attempts to establish a global digital logistics network utilising the TTC group’s global logistics activities.

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“We are delighted to support Hio and the OnePort 365 team as they embark on the journey of digitizing the end-to-end freight management process in Africa. There is great potential to unlock significant commercial opportunities across the continent by addressing the longstanding challenges that have made it difficult to move freights into and around the continent, and we are confident that OnePort 365 has what it takes to succeed,” Takeshi Watanabe, CEO of Mobility 54 Investment SAS said. 

A Look At What The Startup Does

OnePort is a startup founded in 2020 with the mission of resolving issues in Africa’s cross-border logistics sector. The company is now operating a digital logistics platform in Nigeria and Ghana.

When exporting from or importing to Africa, cargo owners can use OnePort’s platform to obtain quotes, book, and track ocean freight, customs clearance, and marine insurance on a single OnePort platform at any time.

In general, each port in Africa has its own distinct operation system and commercial practices, which makes digitalization challenging at times.

OnePort provides solutions that are conceived and developed with a thorough grasp of each port operation, so assisting in the practical reduction of the cargo owner’s genuine pain.

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Today, OnePort has over 50 commercial customers in Nigeria, and the service was launched in Ghana in April.

Africa is becoming a key contributor to global marine trade, accounting for approximately 12% of the 811 million containers processed by ports globally. Africa’s clearing and forwarding sector is also expanding, with recent data indicating a market size of $4.2 billion and a predicted 12.5 percent growth rate due to the introduction of new services.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert. 
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh