Denim's mission is to build a stronger supply chain through its flexible and easy-to-use platform
NEW YORK – Sept 15, 2022 – Denim, the leading financial enablement platform for the freight and logistics industry, today announced the closing of a $126 million Series B led by Pelion Venture Partners, including $26 million in equity financing and $100 million in debt financing. The funding is a combination of equity to scale its platform and debt financing to provide working capital to freight brokerages.
“The core challenge our clients face is adapting to the pressures of an increasingly complex and unpredictable supply chain. Freight brokers — and the shippers and carriers they work with — must find ways to evolve how they do business together with smarter tools,” said Bharath Krishnamoorthy, chief executive officer and co-founder of Denim. “Denim is pioneering the financial enablement market to meet this challenge, benefiting all parties along the supply chain. With the support of our investors, we’ll continue to scale and serve our clients while strengthening our position as a payments ecosystem that powers the supply chain.”
Last year, Denim quadrupled its revenue, and this year facilitated nearly 60,000 jobs between shippers, carriers and freight brokers through its platform. This year alone, the brand scaled the team 200%. Denim will leverage the funding to continue scaling the team and fuel product expansion efforts to meet the growing needs of the $134 billion freight broker market. Specifically, Denim will continue to build on its strong customer demand by providing flexible financing and automation tools that reduce daily payments and collections tasks by 75%.
The Series B funding round, which was led by Pelion Venture Partners, included participation from Crosslink Capital, Anthemis, Trucks VC, FJ Labs, Tribeca Early Stage Partners, and Refashiond Ventures. In total, Denim has raised $165 million in three years.
“Denim’s innovation within the freight and logistics space has connected thousands through a payments infrastructure that streamlines the flow of money and data — an area where we see a great need for technological advancement and one where Denim will continue to capitalize. We are excited to partner with Bharath, Shawn, the rest of Denim’s leadership team, and our co-investors as the company continues its growth trajectory,” said Blake Modersitzki, managing partner at Pelion Venture Partners.
The new brand, Denim, symbolizes the company's goal to build a stronger supply chain through reliable, flexible and easy-to-use tools. Comparable to how denim revolutionized the way people work and dress, Denim’s financial enablement platform is on a path to making freight shipment payments easy and trustworthy at every step of the supply chain.
“Denim embodies who we are as a team and what we want to achieve in the freight and logistics industry - to be a reliable, essential, and universal partner to our clients,” said Shawn Vo, chief technology officer and co-founder of Denim. “In the last year, our business has evolved and grown dramatically, including enhancements to our platform that help our clients optimize their financial decisions and considerable additions to our teams. We’re excited to unveil our new name and branding as we move into the next phase of growth.”
For more information, please visit www.Denim.com or follow Denim on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
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About Denim
Denim is a financial enablement platform for the logistics industry that offers an ecosystem of intelligent financial products, operations tools, and time-saving automation. Its proprietary technology enables freight brokers to simplify their financing operations and easily access the working capital they need to grow in the competitive, $2 trillion logistics market. Denim automates invoicing, collections, and payments — ultimately reducing daily payments and collections tasks by 75%. A remote-first company, Denim has been named a Best Place To Work by Built In and Best Workplace for Innovators by Fast Company.
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In May 2022, Denim was lucky enough to attend The Future of Supply Chain, a premiere event hosted by FreightWaves, a leader in supply chain intelligence. The Future of Supply Chain celebrates how companies are digitally transforming the management of their supply chains and gives attendees the chance to “explore the latest technology, newest applications, trends in education and continuing evolution of the overall supply chain.”
Denim demonstrated our payment automation software at the event. In case you missed it, here’s a recap of our demo and how it went.
The major attractions of FreightWaves’ The Future of Supply Chain live event are the 7-minute live demos. Here’s a recap of what we covered in ours:
We set the stage by explaining that 3PLs, freight brokers and shippers are looking for ways to streamline workflows and increase efficiencies. Because of that, they need the right tools to help. They want to spend more time growing their business and moving freight, not chasing down an ACH payment or a lost check sent to a carrier.
With that in mind, our Chief Technology Officer Shawn Vo and Head of Product Sean Smith (and an imaginary Sean Connery) hit the stage to show off how our product works.
First, they showed the audience how to connect your network. In the presentation, they showed how to add customers (shippers) to the platform. We saw that when you add a shipper, you can pull in information like invoices, collections history, and credit scores. You can also add information for contractors (carriers), such as payment information, prior transactions, factoring relationships, addresses, and more.
Our team showed how Denim is helping connect data across brokers’ businesses, empowering them to be more efficient and make smarter, data-driven decisions.
After we added customers and contractors, we then added new jobs and showed off the fact that you can add a new job in under 30 seconds. You can also add it via a bulk import or with our API integration from our TMS partners.
Once you add a job, Denim goes to work for you. We:
Throughout the lifecycle of a job, clients are also able to access financial reporting and have a fully-reconciled accounting system via our QuickBooks integration. With all of this assistance, clients report saving about 30 minutes per job versus doing the whole thing manually.
Next, we showed the audience how to run payments on the Denim platform. Here are some highlights:
Creating a job in Denim is fast, but what’s even faster is not having to add one at all.
Our real-time API integrations will accept jobs directly from our partner TMS systems and process those jobs all the way through payment and collections. Clients really get hooked on the integration because integrating their TMS with Denim is a breeze. Our open API architecture allows us to be a hub that can integrate quickly to any TMS or accounting software, making Denim the only provider in the industry that serves as a one-stop, full-service platform.
In addition to growing our client base, we are also always looking to build strategic partnerships with new integrations. If you have any ideas or partnerships you’d like us to consider, you can submit them on our site!
We are so proud to show off our product and the Future of Supply Chain attendees agreed. We were voted as one of the three top demos on day 1 out of more than 30 companies. We are passionate about the product we’re creating here at Denim and are so honored that attendees could feel that passion, as well.
Our demo at Future of Supply Chain was amazing, but what’s even more amazing is seeing it for yourself. Ready to schedule your own demo? Contact our sales team directly or schedule a demo that fits your schedule.
You asked and we delivered! We are beyond excited to announce the new Denim Business Performance Dashboard that boasts features tailored to our client’s requests.
Let’s look at some of the most exciting features of the new dashboard.
First, we have the “Jobs Over Time” chart. Depending on the type of user you are, this chart displays your receivables and payables and can tell you your profits and fees. This will show how your business is progressing through different timeframes. Want more detailed data? You can view a snapshot in time for each data point while also viewing the overall aggregate data.
While your account has tabs for each of your business needs, this dashboard provides frequently used quick links to other account tabs such as “Jobs” and “Request Center”.
The new Business Performance Dashboard lets you know if there are invoices approaching 90 days and gives you a heads up so you can be proactive before they go into chargeback status.
The summary of balances track your payments, contractor payables, and customer receivables. Need to make a payment? Don’t worry, your current amount of Denim Cash is displayed to the right.
The “Average Days Sales Outstanding” chart or “DSO” chart indicates how quickly you are closing out your invoices.
Here, we have the “Total Factored Amount” chart. As we listened to our clients, we found how important it was to show the factored amount over the lifetime of the account with Denim. Shown as a monthly trend, this helps you understand which months were higher vs. lower factoring time periods.
The dashboard also shows your fastest paying customers and slowest paying customers. This helps you decide which shippers are worth doing continued business with by counting their number of loads. This also helps you decide which shippers you shouldn’t be prioritizing as they may be unresponsive or have to be tracked down for payment.
“Most Frequently Used Carriers” is ranked by the number of jobs during a particular time period and “Most Profitable Customers” shows who you want to seek out to do more business with as they have the best margins.
Now that we have gone over all these shiny new features, which were the most requested and most important to our clients? Spoiler alert: nearly all the new features were requested from customers!
The DSO chart was most requested by our clients, along with the detailed chart displaying the business growth over time. The total amount factored month to date and year to date, along with improved metrics on both carriers and customers, were also highly requested.
Our new Business Performance Dashboard speeds up the process of making requests, providing more visibility into top carriers and customers, total factored amounts, and overall business health projections. We hope you are just as excited to experience this dashboard as we are for you to reap the benefits of these new insights.
Want to see for yourself how our new dashboard works? Schedule a demo today!
There’s no denying that it’s been a tumultuous year (or a couple of years) for freight brokers. Between rising gas prices, driver shortages, and increased (then waning) demand, it’s not an easy industry to succeed in!
With that in mind, we set out to conduct a report about freight brokers, for freight brokers. We worked with a leading research agency to survey nearly 200 brokers to see how they feel about their business, the overall freight broker landscape, and what they are expecting in 2023. The insights we found are invaluable to freight brokers today.
We have long known that it’s important for freight brokers to save time on back-office operations and to digitize their practices, but we wanted to conduct some research to prove this point. We also wanted to provide some concrete learnings to help freight brokers grow their businesses. As a partner for our customers, we pride ourselves on helping our broker clients succeed. This report gives us actionable insights into how we can do this.
According to the report, freight brokers spend too much time on broker operations, including invoicing, collections, and payments.
The report also highlights the need for digitalization in the freight industry.
These findings highlight that it’s no longer viable for successful freight brokers to rely on antiquated payment processes. This is because freight brokers are a key component of the supply chain and if their systems are bogged down, that slows down the movement of goods for their customers and carrier partners.
“Time is everything in logistics,” said Bharath Krishnamoorthy, CEO and co-founder of Denim. “Shippers need goods delivered on time, and carriers need to be paid on time. Because they act as connectors in the supply chain, freight brokers must have a streamlined payment process to avoid errors and delays. Denim’s report showcases the need to invest in smarter tools to optimize back office operations and drive revenue.”
We partnered with Ascend2 to produce this high-quality, original research study. Ascend2 benchmarks the performance of business strategies and the tactics and technology that drives them. With a custom online questionnaire, the Freight Broker Pulse Report survey was fielded during the month of August 2022. The report collected responses from 168 employees of freight brokerages located in the United States that have brokered at least one load in the previous 30 days at the time of the survey.
Download the full report using the form below to learn more about these key findings and how they can help you grow your freight brokerage in today’s competitive landscape.
NEW YORK,Jan. 25, 2022/PRNewswire/ --Denim, the all-in-one financial platform for modern freight brokers, has grown its talented executive team, adding Jamie Waldinger as Vice President of Revenue and Heather Beckstead, PHR-CA and SHRM-CP, as Head of People. This comes after a strong 2021 in which the company raised its Series A, grew revenue and headcount almost 5x, and expanded its product offering beyond the initial payments solution.
"Jamie and Heather have joined Denim at a vital time in our growth," said CEO,Bharath Krishnamoorthy. "As the supply chain experiences more stress, freight brokers continue looking for solutions to update antiquated payment processes and make their lives easier. Jamie will be instrumental in scaling our revenue org and helping us reach a larger segment of customers. Heather will continue making Denim a top tech employer. By adding them to the team, 2022 is off to a promising start."
Waldinger, an accomplished executive with more than 20 years of experience and a consulting background, brings an MBA from MIT Sloan and an early career as a software engineer. His notable positions include Head of Strategy at Dunkin' Brands and Vice President of Marketing at Constant Contact. Waldinger's rich experience in go-to-market-strategy and execution will lend itself seamlessly to Denim where he's charged with growing the brand, acquiring customers and driving rapid revenue growth.
"I am thrilled to join such a talented team, pursuing a very ambitious vision. Bharath, Shawn and the team have built a strong foundation for Denim," said Waldinger. "I am eager to be working with them to help drive Denim towards that vision."
will leadAs Head of People, Beckstead will lead DEI efforts, find new ways to create exceptional employee experiences, and implement leadership and development training programs to help the company grow its talent. Her 20+ years of experience in organizational growth includes most recently leading technology companies like SocialChorus, Bitnami, and Valassis Digital through successful exits. Built In recently recognized Denim for its superior remote-first company culture. For more information about Denim, visit Denim.com.
About Denim
Denim is the all-in-one financial services platform that is rapidly disrupting the$250 billionfreight intermediary market. Its proprietary technology allows freight brokers to simplify their financing operations and easily access the working capital they need to grow. Denim automates invoicing, collections, and payments - ultimately delivering a better customer experience. A remote-first company, Denim has been named a Best Place To Work by Built In. Read more if you’re interested in learning more about how Denim can help grow your credit and help build your business, we’d love to talk.
NEW YORK, March 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Denim, a payments automation and financing platform for freight and logistics, announced Denim Wallet, a new carrier payments solution. With Denim Wallet, freight brokerages and shippers can use their own capital to pay their carriers while still benefiting from Denim's high-powered payments network. Denim Wallet customers can seamlessly schedule and disburse funds to carriers and access the same suite of automation features offered as a part of Denim's core platform, including access to its multiple TMS and accounting integrations.
"Freight brokers and shippers are riding the wave of digital transformation, streamlining workflows and increasing efficiencies," said Shawn Vo, co-founder and CTO of Denim. "Our financial platform enables brokers and shippers to automate their most time-consuming tasks so they can focus on growing their business and moving shipments."
With Denim Wallet, brokers and shippers can transfer funds to a singular account and disperse payments to the right carrier at the right time. By virtue of the Denim Network, factor relationships and payment details are securely managed and carriers have one login to track all their payments. When combined with Denim's flagship integrations, clients can eliminate manual data entries to initiate these payments and put carrier payments on autopilot for fast-growing brokerages and shippers.
"Denim Wallet has helped us transform our payment operations, allowing us to be more efficient while also improving carrier satisfaction", said Rajvir Kumarof Tera, Inc. "With Denim's software, we no longer worry about carrier payments and we can focus on growing the business."Today's announcement comes on the heels of Denim hiring Jamie Waldinger as Vice President of Revenue and Heather Beckstead as Head of People. For more information about Denim, visit Denim.com.
About Denim
Denim is the all-in-one financial services platform that is rapidly disrupting the$250 billion freight intermediary market. Its proprietary technology allows freight brokers to simplify their financing operations and easily access the working capital they need to grow. Denim automates invoicing, collections, and payments - ultimately delivering a better customer experience. A remote-first company, Denim has been named a Best Place To Work by Built In.
Read more if you’re interested in learning more about how Denim can help grow your credit and help build your business, we’d love to talk.
Denim received a $27.7 million boost of debt and equity financing to advance its platform that manages cash flow for freight brokers.
Anthemis and Techstars participated in the round that includes $2.7 million in equity and $25 million in debt financing. This brings the New York-based company’s total amount raised since its inception in 2017 to $29.1 million, according to Crunchbase data. In January, Denim raised a $1.4 million pre-seed round, led by Trucks Venture Capital.
Co-founders Bharath Krishnamoorthy and Shawn Vo had the idea for Dafter learning how crucial cash flow is to small businesses–of which many freight forwarders are–while building a transportation tech company together.
Freight brokers earn a commission by securing transportation for goods that need to be moved. In the past, brokers were paid 30 or 40 days later by the customers who needed to ship their goods, at which time they would pay the transportation company. What changed was bigger companies entering the space, promising what they call “quick pay,” sometimes the next day, Krishnamoorthy, CEO, told Crunchbase News.
“Many of the brokers may only have revenue of $10 million or $12 million, so they are not sitting on a large portion of money they can lend out,” he added. “We help bridge that gap and take over all of that for them so they can focus on their business.”
Denim’s proprietary software-based service provides freight brokers and forwarders with that affordable working capital and back-office automation, as well as gives them their own “QuickPay” service to offer to their trucking company vendors.
In terms of where Denim will use the new funding, the debt portion will provide the financing and opportunity to scale operations to additional markets, while the equity will be invested in product development, Krishnamoorthy said.
Although the company was founded in 2017, Krishnamoorthy and Vo did not begin working on the concept until last year. Over the past 12 months, Denim has processed millions of dollars in invoices and continues to grow 40 percent month-over-month, Krishnamoorthy said.
Its business nearly tripled since April, buoyed by brokers who needed help as the global pandemic grew worse.
“Brokers get hit on two fronts: During the recession, their volumes fall when they aren’t getting paid by customers, but they also get hit on the upswing when they are doing more volume but are only working with the smaller amount of payables,” Krishnamoorthy added. “It’s likely that this cash flow problem will grow as the year progresses.”
Meanwhile, Ruth Foxe-Blader, partner at Anthemis, said via email that Denim was attractive due to its vision of supporting small and medium-sized businesses with financial products and risk management tools.
“COVID-19 has made this company even more relevant for a number of reasons: road freight is increasingly important, and small carriers will rely on Denim’s QuickPay solution in order to ensure smooth cash flows, enabling them to continue operating despite fluctuations in demand,” she added. “Denim's technology stack is second-to-none, with critical product releases shipping regularly in order to enable seamless integration for freight intermediaries of any size.”
Read the article here.
Denim recently announced it raised $10 million Series A financing after a stellar year of growth. The round was led by Crosslink Capital with participation from FJ Labs, Flexport, Tribeca Early Stage Partners and others, including existing investors Anthemis Group, Techstars, and Plug and Play Ventures.
In a press release, the company points to the past 12 months of operation, as it saw volume grow 850% on its payments and financing platform designed specifically for freight brokers and carriers. The company’s services allow freight brokers to quickly modernize and compete against new startups. Denim says its solutions also automate carrier payments, invoicing and collections, which allows operators to connect all aspects of their freight broker operations.
Denim anticipates using the new capital to expand operations, develop new services and strengthen the company’s payment and financing platform.
Co-founders Bharath Krishnamoorthy and Shawn Vo founded the company in 2019. The company raised a $1.4 million pre-seed round from Trucks VC in 2020, followed by a $2.7 million seed round from Techstars and Anthemis Group and a $27.7 million debt and equity round later that year.
CEO and co-founder Krishnamoorthy says in a released statement: "Denim’s proprietary technology levels the playing field, so our customers can compete in a highly competitive market. With our financial platform, we’re empowering freight brokers to rapidly grow and differentiate their businesses in a cutthroat industry. We’re excited to partner with our investors to transform the freight and logistics industry.”
Crosslink Capital partner David Silverman says Krishnamoorthy and Vo established themselves as an industry leader in factoring for freight brokers, and points to the company’s previous 12 months as being impressive. “We look forward to helping them scale operations,” he says.
Read the whole article here.
[NEW YORK, NEW YORK, Jan 02, 2022] - Built In today announced that Denim was honored in its 2022 Best Places To Work Awards. Specifically, Denim earned a place in the Top 100 Remote-First Companies to Work for in 2022. The annual awards program includes companies of all sizes and honors both remote-first employers as well as companies in the eight largest tech markets across the U.S.
“We are excited to be honored by Built In for Denim’s efforts in building a supportive, team-first culture and offering best-in-class benefits,” says Bharath Krishnamoorthy, Denim Co-founder and CEO. “We’re growing fast and looking forward to adding over 100 new Denimnauts in 2022.”
Built In determines the winners of Best Places to Work based on an algorithm, using company data about compensation, benefits and companywide programming. To reflect the benefits candidates are searching for more frequently on Built In, the program also weighs criteria like remote and flexible work opportunities, programs for DEI and other people-first cultural offerings.
2021 was a year of significant growth for Denim with a Series A raise and additional product offerings along with an increase in staffing. In 2022, Denim anticipates another growth year and is currently hiring across all departments. Current job openings include positions in Engineering, Operations, Marketing and Sales.
“It is my honor to extend congratulations to the 2022 Best Places to Work winners,” says Sheridan Orr, Chief Marketing Officer, Built In. “This year saw a record number of entrants — and the past two years fundamentally changed what tech professionals want from work. These honorees have risen to the challenge, evolving to deliver employee experiences that provide the meaning and purpose today’s tech professionals seek.”
Built In is creating the largest platform for technology professionals globally. Monthly, more than three million of the industry’s most in-demand professionals visit the site from across the world. They rely on our platform to stay ahead of tech trends and news, develop their careers and find opportunities at companies whose values they share. Built In also serves 1,800 innovative companies of all sizes, ranging from startups to the Fortune 100. By putting their stories in front of our uniquely engaged audience, we help them hire otherwise hard-to-reach tech professionals, locally, nationally or remotely. http://www.builtin.com
Built In’s esteemed Best Places to Work Awards, now in its fourth year, honor companies across numerous categories: 100 Best Places to Work, 50 Best Small Places to Work, 100 Best Midsize Places to Work, 50 Companies with the Best Benefits and 50 Best Paying Companies, 100 Best Large Companies to Work For, and 100 Best Remote-First Places to Work.
Denim is a venture-backed pioneer in the world of freight finance. By combining decades of industry expertise with a next-generation technology platform, Denim is helping freight intermediaries modernize their operations and optimize their cash flows. For more information, visit Denim.com.
Read More if you’re interested in learning more about how Denim can help grow your credit and help build your business, we’d love to talk.
