Parsyl doesn’t leave shipment of essential goods to chance

Cargo insurance and risk management solutions provider Parsyl announced it has closed a $25 million series B led by HSCM Ventures with participation from existing investors GLP Capital Partners and Luna and strategic investors Lineage Ventures and Flexport Ventures.

The Denver-based company works with a number of pharmaceutical and perishable food companies to leverage its risk management technology to reduce waste and better track risk throughout the world.

Parsyl co-founder and CEO Ben Hubbard told FreightWaves the idea for starting the business came after overseeing supply chain operations in the developing world.

“Multinational companies and small businesses were leaving the shipment of essential goods to chance. We had a phrase for it: Ship and pray. So we started to see that it was a really important problem to solve for delivering lifesaving goods, like vaccines, but also a very big problem for commercial businesses as well,” Hubbard said.

He said that while the perishable food and pharmaceutical industries do collect data, his team found a lot of that data is thrown aside and ignored when it could be used to monitor risk of future shipments.

Funding details	Parsyl
Funding amount	$25 million
Funding round	Series B
Lead investor	HSCM Ventures
Secondary investors	Lineage Ventures, Flexport Ventures, GLP Capital Partners and Luna
Business goals for the round	Expand insurance provider partnerships and grow risk management technology solutions
Total funding	$45.2 million

“Companies would use rudimentary monitoring devices but the data would never make it off the device,” he said. “We saw an opportunity to use the data that’s already been collected, make it affordable to collect and access that data and use that information to understand their risks.”

Along with the series B, Parsyl also announced it has launched a U.S.-based managing general underwriter and is expanding the scope of its syndicate with Lloyd’s of London.

“While we are working with customers as an insurer, we want to build an understanding of the risk we are taking so we both benefit from our technology. We are really aligned with the clients to help minimize any losses that may occur and motivated to give them the valuable insights that we know can reduce chances of losses and help them get ahead of potential risks they may not even be aware of,” said Hubbard.

While Parsyl is providing analytics and underwriting capabilities, it also manufactures and provides sensors to its customers, something Hubbard believes makes it much easier for his company to give a full spectrum of risk insight.

“The reason we provide that hardware is because the existing solutions available are really outdated and don’t allow for broad, consistent data collection that can lead to these transformative insights for risk management,” he said.

These transformative insights have enabled the company to make great strides in its markets, as it currently monitors vaccines and other for more than 200 million people with its risk management technology.

With its new funding, along with new board members like Adrian Jones, a partner at HSCM Ventures, Parsyl plans to expand its insurance offerings both in the U.S. and globally and expand its risk management solutions.

“The essential goods supply chain is extremely important — it is the food we need, the medicine we need — and we should be putting a lot of thought, effort, technology and data behind it to make it better,” Hubbard said.

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Articles by Grace Sharkey

Parsyl doesn’t leave shipment of essential goods to chance

Cargo insurance and risk management solutions provider raises $25 million to expand reach

Watch now: AI-enabled risk mapping in defense supply chains

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Grace Sharkey