As a CEO, I'm a team player, and that is what makes the Marine Digital expertise that I represent so strong. The Chief Product Officer is the former CFO of a shipping company, and our Legal consul has about 20 years’ experience in marine legal, the CTO also has strong experience in logistics projects
- Marine Digital is founded in Moscow. How hard is it for you to do business amid geopolitical tensions between Russia and the West?
- I‘m not into politics at all, I‘m looking for the best business opportunities for my project and my team. I believe in common sense and hope the nationality won‘t be the problem, my team is based in Riga and my company was set up in Latvia.
I‘m 100% focused on my project. I decided to relocate because I see more business opportunities for a small IT company in the EU and more options for scaling from the Baltic region, than it was possible in Russia. It‘s my own experience and opinion based on the past 6 months. I believe that a product and a technology has no nationality if it meets the market demand.
- Yet you applied for a Latvian start-up visa and were granted it. Was it easy?
- Latvia as a part of the Baltic region is well known for its port logistics business. Most of the locals here have friends in logistics or work in the logistics industry. It was easy to explain the idea of marine digital. The whole process took about two months, and it was an interesting experience. I was expecting that I would spend days filling in the forms and different papers to apply, I thought there would be lots of barriers within the bureaucracy and government services, sad faces in the cabinets and etc. None of these things happened. It was easy. LIAA helped us not only with relocation but with business contacts and networking, which was helpful for our startup, and it was also a positive experience.
- I heard Marine Digital has launched some exciting pilot projects after being awarded the visa. Can you please speak about them?
- Life never fails to surprise me and soon after relocating the team we found a partner, the Magnat Group, they operate with bulk and general cargo. We had some negotiations and decided to try our automation ideas on a free trial basis. Within a couple of months, we built the warehouse management solution and found some interesting cases that we are working on. One of them is Computer Vision, and we use it for typical documents that go with the cargo, and we are speeding up the operations, excluding paperwork and manual procedures. Within the Magnat Group terminals, we have also developed the queue management system, weight and some other modules.
- Can you please speak about your team? How did you manage to assemble it full of niche-field experts?
- All of the niche-field experts are fanatics of their industry, in a good way of course. They enjoy looking into problems and then solving them successfully. Maritime IT is a huge challenge, the industry is conservative, it has established traditions, laws and hidden rules. Not many start-ups dare to go this way. This year at the web summit Marine-Digitale was one of the few who represented Maritime industry there. As a CEO my strong side is team management, each member of the project is a unique expert, I do my best to focus the whole scope of their expertise on solving the industry problems and developing solutions to meet particular client requests that have been painful for decades.
- How big is the competition among port logistics-oriented companies?
- In my opinion, the market seems to be divided into several parts: large IT companies like cargotec / sap / jade logistics, big ports with their own products like Hamburg, Rotterdam (it‘s also the IT companies today), and trade finance marketplaces like Cargox and Marcopolo, tecnological start-ups and logistic companies with freight exchanges like.... One may get an impression that there is a huge competition on the market, but if you go into the details you see that there still is a place for new players, especially with the SAAS model for smalland medium players. As I said before the market is really huge. Lack of industry experts and an integrational approach slows down big companies, purely IT start-ups struggle to understand the problems of the industry and sometimes they solve problems that don’t exist in practice. This market with high entrance barriers requires great industry knowledge.
- What do you expect for your company in 2020?
- We are moving within the normal way of the growing start-up company. We have finished the R&D cycle, found the particular solutions that meet the market demand, and we are going to grow with the acceleration programs/industry partnerships, and afterward, we will go for the next stage growth round with the industry fund. One of the main challenges for us is to build the universal box solution for the whole scope of different types of terminals/ports (bulk, general cargo, lpg, container and etc.) One of the greatest challenges of the year 2020 is to connect port logistics within one ecosystem with banks and trade Finance funds. Now they live on different planets and have no plans to interact. We have a lot of work to do next year.We are moving within the normal way of the growing start-up company. We have finished the R&D cycle, found the particular solutions that meet the market demand, and we are going to grow with the acceleration programs/industry partnerships.
1. An architect type of person in Baltic logistics – Interview with Magnus Lepasalu - Partner and Member of the management Board of Balti Logistika, a Tallinn-based company offering freight forwarding and supply chain management services in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
2. Former Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus: “Once you put your hand on the Constitution, your life changes forever”
3. Gustas Germanavicius, Co-Founder and CEO of EvoEstate, about unique RE crowdfunding investments platform
4. Estonia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Urmas Reinsalu: “The glass is always half full”
5. BSF director Otto Tabuns: China is not alternative to Russia;
Source: baltictimes.com2020-02-02 15:00 Read more