Despite the life-changing pandemic crisis all over the world that affected the supply chain, financial, and VC sectors in one line with social life Marine Digital team has passed the important milestones of product pivot and further prototype development, HQ establishment in Northern Germany region, and finally the pre-seed round of 600 000 EUR closure.
The vessel market has a set of problems that slows down the digitalization in surrounding parts of the supply chain and affects the climate with excessive emissions. Analog vessels are expensive to digitalize in one line with the cost of satellite internet 1k for 1Gb, long installation cycle for the hardware not suitable for the short term freight, lack of AI algorithms for route planning, ETA, and fuel consumption prediction based not only on the public AIS or GPS data but on the real vessel performance metrics and weather detailed parameters. These problems make vessel performance inefficient and disconnect cargo owners, insurers, and onshore logistics with their modern ERP's from the important part of the chain, increase the risks and costs for the end customers and affect the climate. That's why we develop a set of technologies to reduce the digital twin cost up to 5-7 times and make it mass market available, our AI algorithms are based on telemetric data analytics and bring the next level of accuracy while being lightweight in relation to the data transfer. We are tailoring new technologies to the best performance of the fleets in cooperation with progressive industry experts.
The idea behind the Marine Digital project is a combination of modern technologies merging IoT, AI, and Big Data in one single product to support fleet managers and cargo owners transporting the goods through rivers and oceans with carbon footprint reduction and at the same time fuel cost efficiency with confirmed efficiency of 12%
With the support of fundraising advisors and the local German ecosystem, Marine Digital GmbH has closed the syndicated loan and grant deal in a total amount of 580k EUR. The innovation loan provided by IB-SH, MBG, and Sparkasse, the grant financing by WTSH.
2020 was a life-changing year for most of us and Marine Digital is not an exception.
Upon joining Axel Springer and Porsche early-stage fund portfolio in March 2020 we've started to train the skills of market analytics, team management, product development, and hiring. This complex knowledge helped us to choose wisely the application of the core team talents and work in a turbulent environment during the next periods.
In 3q2020 after heavy discussion inside the core team, we decided to make a pivot and launch a brand new development with an HQ in Germany, and right in the middle of the lockdown in August 2020, with guidance from our fundraising advisors Anton Adamovitch and Alexander Clausen, we've confirmed the arrangements with WTSH and IB-SH.de regarding the project grant and credit support as well as started the relocation process. With the additional support of Maritime Cluster Northern Germany and Gateway49, our core team continued the synchronization with the local ecosystem of northern Germany and the state of Schleswig-Holstein. In December 2020 we launched the hardware laboratory in our home office in Lübeck and initiated the negotiations with Technikzentrum Lübec and Aalto University Finland regarding the cooperation on algorithms development. In February 2021 KI Transfer Hub (WTSH, Kiel) proposed we start a dialog with several scientists related to AI development in the marine sector.
Alexey Fitiskin (CMO), Ivan Ladan (CEO), Amir Mamedov (CTO)
Finally, in March 2021, we closed the round to launch the RnD cycle of IoT and AI algorithms and further the establishment of manufacturing in Northern Germany.
Marine Digital team highly appreciates the involvement of the German local ecosystem and support aiming to contribute further towards green technologies implementation within one of the biggest vessel markets in the world.
