In less than three years, the world’s only cloud-native air cargo solutions provider, CargoAi, has succeeded in overtaking some of its close competitors and has already attracted a quarter of the world’s airline capacity to its digital marketplace. More airline and GSA contracts are in place to double this by the end of this year.
CargoAi’s mission as a marketing technology company and SaaS application provider is to “bring the best technologies to airfreight, so as to effectively build the missing pieces and seamlessly connect the airfreight industry.” The approaches it takes to digitalize forwarder, airline, GSA, TMS, and other air cargo stakeholder processes, are unique. For one, CargoAi uses code instead of servers to support its applications, deploying the latest available technology in building its solutions. Its most distinctive differentiator compared to other real-time digital platforms, is its unique and easy-to-adopt spot request feature available for more than 80 airlines. This is a freight forwarder favorite since it can be used to request larger shipments (averaging 2 tonnes in weight) that are often not covered by an airline’s API due to technical limitations. Co-construction is also a central element that distinguishes CargoAi’s approach: working hand in hand with GSAs, CargoAi provides them with tools that allow them to respond more effectively to the needs of the airlines they serve. Also, the fact that CargoAi is cloud-native since its very beginning; is a basis that greatly facilitates its intense IT and data security focus. And finally, user experience is central to every step of the product development, leading to an intuitive platform for which freight forwarders require no training in order to be able to start using it.
The result so far is a suite of products including Marketplace, Whitelabel, API suite, CargoBi, and Sustainability. CargoAi’s eBooking marketplace sees double-figure growth every month and now includes 61 airlines flying 5,000 different routes. More than 5,000 freight forwarders across 103 countries actively use the platform, benefitting from greater process efficiencies and the transparency it offers. CargoAi’s current contract rollout will connect 50% of the world’s air cargo capacity by the end of 2022, doubling its current status, with more in the pipeline for 2023.
Looking at CargoAi’s other products: its Whitelabel booking portal offers airlines the chance to feature their own brand on the digital interface and to wholly integrate the booking platform in their own cargo system. A Sustainability Calculator enables the identification of more environmentally friendly routes so that forwarders can opt to reduce their shipment’s carbon footprint. With CargoAi, users have access to Business & Revenue Intelligence for airlines (distribution, sales & network), forwarders (procurement & product), as well as for the airfreight community at large.
As CargoAi is already integrated with every airline cargo management system such as Cargospot, iCargo, or Skychain, for example, new airlines can very quickly interface to CargoAi at a minimal cost. It takes less than 4 weeks to activate the live distribution via CargoAi, and receive the first eBookings.
“I created CargoAi 3 years ago because I saw that the air cargo industry is still very much in the infancy of digitalization and could hugely benefit from technologies and digital best practices that are already standard in other industries,” Matthieu Petot, CEO of CargoAi, explains. “Our initial eBooking and eQuote marketplace was nothing short of a revolution in terms of user experience and efficiency gains for our airline and freight forwarding partners. We have greatly expanded our product portfolio since then and are implementing a very clear 5-year roadmap. Our advantage, as the only neutral marketplace provider, is the huge potential in terms of technology and additional efficiency that we can develop and offer to all airlines and freight forwarders. We are the digital market leader in Asia, where we started out, and now offer more airlines and routes than our peers in Europe, thanks to a few strategic partnerships. As an example, over 25 airlines are life with the instant requests in Spain, and 23 in Germany, which is more than double those of our competitors. Our sights for 2022 are set on North and South American expansion with the recruitment of more than 15 people worldwide this year, and we will be launching new airlines and partners in those regions in the coming weeks.”
