Startup of the month: rouvia

Please give us a brief company description of rouvia.

rouvia is a Berlin based software startup focused on turning data into actionable insights and tangible gross margin improvements for seafreight forwarders. We are building a procurement and quotation solution that helps FCL forwarders to optimize buying and selling decisions for their global drayage / hinterland transports. Our intelligent algorithms take existing data and identify the optimal transport flow out of millions of transport options, enabling cost savings of up to €170 per TEU (depending on status-quo processes).

Tell us a bit about the founding story of rouvia. When and how was rouvia born?‍

After we (myself and Fuad) met at Entrepreneur First, Rouvia was founded in the fall of 2021. Since then, we have had an interesting development: During the early days of rouvia we aimed to build an FCL drayage / hinterland marketplace. About a year into the business, we have been confronted with the difficult reality that a marketplace doesn’t solve a pressing problem for sea freight forwarders and adds little to no value to their daily business. Luckily, we have spent significant time with our development partners, where we saw a big value creation opportunity through unlocking the optimisation potential of the millions of data points, which freight forwarders have at their disposal.

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Who are the people behind rouvia? Tell us about the founders and initiators of rouvia and what motivates them.

Fuad (CTO) is the geeky genius behind product and tech development. He has spearheaded the development of SaaS platforms and marketplaces in early-stage startups for 12 years and bootstrapped his startup previously. Captivated by the industry's need for digitization, he decided to team up with Ben to drive the logistics industry into the 21st century.Ben (CEO) is the innovative force propelling all commercial initiatives and guiding the strategic product roadmap. He has collaborated with several forwarders and railway companies as a consultant, bringing a wealth of logistics experience to the team. Having witnessed firsthand the vast potential for innovation in the industry, he was motivated to leverage his expertise and establish a company to spearhead change himself.

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Who are typical customers for rouvia (ICP)? Which problems do you solve for them, and what’s usually their most significant pain point?

Our ICP are sea freight forwarding teams that directly manage drayage / hinterland transports via subcontractors (carriers) or agents. This can include both seafreight forwarders and shippers that manage their supply chain operations directly with carriers. In terms of size, our ICP has global operations of at least 20.000 TEU. Due to our location in Berlin, we are mostly focused on European forwarders or European satellite offices, but our solution covers global operations. Today, a majority of our ICP sits on millions of data points that often remain unused due to the fact that the data is highly dispersed across dozens and hundreds of Excel, PDF, and Word files. This is a major constraint when it comes to optimizing decisions, processes and ultimately business growth. 

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How would you describe the core competence / USP of rouvia with regard to your customers?

The main USP of rouvia is the versatility and speed of our technology. Through the use of custom developed AI algorithms, we are able to read-in 95% of all trucking and intermodal carrier data into our system, removing a significant time burden for data management from customers. Within less than a second, our system is able to accurately calculate the all-in cost (incl. all cost factors between ports and depots) for all available procurement options of a transport order in order to support dispatchers to maximize gross margins. There is no other solution on the market that includes the amount of data rouvia considers when it comes to optimizing decisions. 

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How do you usually integrate your solution into your customers' existing operations and IT infrastructure? What is needed from their side?

We have built our solution on an API-first basis. Therefore, we can be plugged into any TMS System (Transport management system = ERP of container freight forwarders) or used as a standalone solution through our user interface, which runs on every browser.‍

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Talking more about the market you’re operating in: analogue processes, a fragmented stakeholder landscape and margin pressure are just a few of the challenges that new software solutions in logistics are facing. How are you dealing with that and how are you potentially even helping your customers to tackle these issues?

Given our value proposition of aiding freight forwarders in enhancing their margins and subsequently applying a SaaS fee based on the savings achieved, we face no challenges in selling our product due to its cost-effectiveness. Moreover, during our discovery calls, we also highlight the potential benefits of digitizing their processes, which can serve as a unique selling proposition compared to their competitors.

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Zooming out a bit further: transportation of goods today is a huge emissions factor. How can intermodal transports contribute to a greener future for logistics and which role does rouvia play in that?

‍rouvia doesn’t directly drive the demand for greener intermodal transports. We are all about optimizing decisions and the ugly truth is that in logistics, the key decision factor remains cost. Our solution has an embedded CO2 emissions calculator that estimates CO2 emissions for every transport option, but its importance in decision optimization is comparably insignificant for our customers.

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How do you see the future of rouvia? How will the product and the company evolve and what’s your overall vision for rouvia?

The vision for rouvia is to become the go-to tool for data-driven optimization of container supply chains. As such, rouvia will become an ecosystem of solutions that leverage data to drive business growth and reduce cost. Things we are working on include a cost control tower for accounting teams as well as an AI-based booking system, helping to significantly reduce emails and manual tasks for dispatchers.