The global supply chain is under strain, and one of the reasons is a lack of visibility into how shipments are being transported around the world. According to one recent survey, nearly half of the organizations polled reported having little-to-no visibility into their upstream supply chains.
In search of a remedy, Krenar Komoni, who’d for years helped his father-in-law track his truck fleet, founded Tive, a startup that’s developing tech to pinpoint freight shipments in real time.
Tive sells single-use tracking devices that can be linked to its cloud platform to let companies in industries like life sciences and food and beverage check the status of their freight. In addition to tracking location, Tive’s sensors can monitor temperature, humidity, light, and “shock” — i.e. physically violent motions.
Through Tive’s cloud platform, its customers can get real-time alerts, analytics, and data sharing tools.
“Tive trackers have generated millions of real-time shipment alerts,” Komoni told TechCrunch in an interview. “Our trackers provide a three-pronged approach to location accuracy, combining cellular triangulation, Wi-Fi positioning, and GPS.”
Tive didn’t start as a freight-tracking company. In its early days, the startup focused on helping carriers and truckers track their vehicles. But Komoni, who has a background in radio frequency and chip design engineering, saw a much bigger opportunity in monitoring shipments themselves.
Tive claims to have more than 900 customers today in sectors like pharmaceuticals and “high-value” goods, as well as military and government clients. The company is generating revenue from those customers in a number of ways, Komoni says, including through annual software fees for its cloud platform, tracker sales and shipment monitoring services.
Komoni expects Tive will reach profitability in 2026.
“Tive’s focus on supply chain solutions for all types of goods — durable, nondurable, perishable, industrial, consumer, and so on — positions it well to weather broader tech slowdowns and recessions,” Komoni said. “Despite the freight recession, which has been the norm since the end of COVID-19, Tive has consistently grown 50%+ year-over-year, and expects to grow at an accelerated rate in 2025.”
To expand its Boston-based workforce of around 243 employees, Tive recently raised $40 million in a Series C round co-led by by World Innovation Lab and Sageview Capital with participation from AVP, RRE Ventures, Two
Sigma Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Fifth Wall, Supply Chain Ventures, and Sorenson Capital.
The new capital brings Tive’s total raised to $120 million. In addition to hiring, Komoni said the new cash will be put toward developing new products, expanding Tive’s sustainability programs (including its tracker recycling program), and bringing the platform to more countries.
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2025-01-23 14:00:00
