Interview with Maarten de Reij, Co-Founder of Cargoplot

Welcome to ChainTech, the show and podcast focusing on the latest trends in supply chain, procurement, and logistics technology. My name is Max Henry from the Global Supply Chain Council, and together with my co-host and special guest, we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in supply chain. From early stage to unicorns, And from cutting-edge technology to the people using it to help drive more innovative, agile, and resilient supply chains around the world. This is ChainTech. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of ChainTech. I'm your host, Max Henry, from the Global Supply Chain Council. And I'm joined today with my co-host, Hui Vuong. Hi, Hui, how are you?

Hi, Max, I'm good. Hi, everyone, I'm Hui. I work as a supply chain design analyst to provide the solutions for the multinational companies. Nice to have a conversation with you today.

Yeah, good to have you again, Hui. Thanks for joining us. So thanks for, you know, all of you listening to this new episode of the show as we continue to host some of the most interesting chain tech founders and discuss the rapid rise of supply chain logistics and procurement technology across the APAC region, but also in Europe and North America. As we jump into today's conversation, I also want to make sure that you are aware of our Chaintech platform where we are, you know, creating the best solutions and the best startups in the field of supply chain. And also, if you are interested to listen to our previous episodes, you can check out, you know, check out the website at chaintech.com. Today we are joined by, you know, Martin Derray, who's a co-founder and a CEO of CargoPlot. Hi Martin, how are you?

Hi Max, thank you for having me. I'm very well, thank you. How are you?

Good. All right, great to have you today. So as we always do that at our interview, I would like to maybe start with you, your background and, you know, where you come from. Maybe you could tell us where you're based, what's your background, Where did you grow up and maybe the type of studies that you have before, you know, starting to work here?

All right, that's pretty much all of my history then. Okay, let's see where to start. I'm Dutch. Cargopod is also based in the Netherlands, but our sort of footprint is global. We work with Chinese companies, for example, Indian companies, etc., as well. So the region is important for us. But let's start with me then. So I grew up in the Netherlands as well, did high school here. During high school, started with my first entrepreneurial ventures, had a lot of fun doing that, and always knew that whatever I was going to do, I probably would end up starting a business somewhere. And generally, what piques my interest about entrepreneurship is that you can help others, you know, do something in a way that they hadn't been able to do it before, and thereby, you know, enhancing their experience of life. So that always motivates me in what I do. And so, to go to my studies that I did, I decided to go do sort of natural sciences studies, a bachelor's, and on the side also a bachelor's in business economics. That I decided to specialize in finance. But right before embarking my career in the industry of private equity, as I was planning to do, I tried sending a couple of motorcycles to South America from Europe at the time. And that was when I came in contact with the industry of freight forwarding as a potential client. I've always— I grew up between people that are active in the field of logistics and freight forwarding. So I wasn't aware of the industry. I just wasn't aware of the industry as a potential client. And at the time, I started looking for a freight forwarder who could help me actually move those motorcycles to wherever I wanted them to go. But I couldn't find one. And it was largely driven by a couple of elements of the industry that led me to believe that an idea as Cargopult would be a good place, would be something valuable. From the basis of that idea, I started talking to a lot of different freight forwarders. in the first place to see whether the idea that I had in mind at the time, which was very different from what it is right now, would suit, would fit the market on that side. And then, of course, you need to start talking to potential clients. So, I did that as well, wrote up the business plan and decided it was an opportunity that I should not let slip. And that's about 2 years ago, and that was the birth of Cargoplot.

Okay, so you actually, your motorcycle business, how long did you actually do this? Is it still a business for you or you stopped selling those bikes?

So it actually wasn't a business at all. I was trying to set up a trip with a group of friends of mine in South America and we wanted to get our motorcycles there. So at the time I was, as a private person, a potential client for the industry, which as you very well know, is something that is in general very difficult for freight forwarders, for example, to service, right? It's different, more difficult to people without any knowledge about the industry to do anything. So, as Cargoplot, well, we will get into the story probably more, but it's important to note that we now only service businesses. We are a B2B marketplace for freight forwarding services. So, it's different from what I was at the time. It was just my first experience with the industry where I started learning about the huge fragmentation and intransparency that led me to believe that there was a problem there that had to be solved.

So it's an interesting journey when it comes to the logistics industry. So having said that, you have the different backgrounds in the university and your work experience. So what makes you confident when you set up your business? And I know that you may have many challenges when you set up it. And how can you overcome it?

So, do I understand correctly? Your first question was whether I— what made me confident at the time about setting it up?

Yeah.

So, okay, clear. I would say I wasn't necessarily confident about knowing what it would have to look like. I was confident about there being a huge issue because I spoke to so many different freight forwarders and potential shippers before I started. So we started zooming in on the problem and I had an idea, vision about how we could solve it. That, you know, when you start a startup, it isn't necessarily that that idea of what the solution is gonna look like in the beginning is definitely gonna be the solution that's gonna turn out to be the way you're going to do it. It's just that if the problem is there, and I had quite high conviction on that because I spoke to so many people, You know that there's something to solve and then, yeah, you know, you're just going to do it and there are challenges, of course, but you try to find ways around them and so far so good.

Okay. So you actually took a leap of faith when you started the company and decided, okay, let's do it. And did you have, before you actually started the business, do you already have a client or or some kind of prototype or something? Not really, right?

No, not at all. But I had a vision on how we would help clients find their freight forwarding services. And I thought I could mimic it using pretty much just my email box. So, during all those interviews with potential shippers, so we service SME shippers, right? We are not in the enterprise environment. So, SME shippers typically have easier decision-making processes. So, during the interviews, with these companies and typically owners of these companies that I would be interviewing, they already started mentioning like, okay, but, you know, when you start, you can just do those first shipments for me, right? So I did during the interviews and especially later in the interviews as the idea crystallized further, they just started placing orders with me. Can you not, you know, can you help me out with this? And then I just started doing that through the email box. Which is not scalable at all, of course. But if you then can help those people and make some money off of it in that way, then it becomes valuable, of course, to build the scalable version of whatever we were doing.

So, you've never worked with a 3PL or logistics service provider before, right? When you started the business?

No, no, not at all.

You were just a customer. Okay.

Yeah. potential customer because in the end we didn't do it because it was such a big problem. But we do have freight forwarders involved in the business as both coaches and investors. So I have close connections to loads of people that are very knowledgeable in the industry actually, and we talk a lot.

Okay. So in one sentence, what is the company doing?

A B2B marketplace for shippers and freight forwarders.

Okay, all right. And what kind of problem are you solving?

We— the transparency in the freight forwarding industry, meaning transparency in rates, in quality of service levels, etc.

So are you saying that the industry is not transparent and there is a lot of Strange things going on when you're trying to get quotations from the freight forwarders?

Very much so, yes, I am actually.

Okay, all right.

Especially with—

Sorry, can you describe a little bit about the products or the service that you provide to your clients?

Yeah, so as a shipper logistics jobs that you might have, like any container from China to Europe, somewhere Netherlands, for example. You can post a job with us or your supplier can do it, for example, if that's the process that you have. And we match you with the freight forwarders in our database and provide you with the quotes that they offer. And then you can select based on the rate, the quality, service levels that they— that it comes with, etc., whether you want to work with this party or that party or this party. Yeah, that's how it works. And then following finding the right solution for you, you can actually process the full logistics operation on our platform. And therefore, every other time that you make a decision on who you want to work with, you can just do it through one system. So it's not, you know, the switching costs go down massively, tremendously compared to the standard where you need to figure out a new way of working with every other partner.

Something that usually those small, medium-sized businesses will do it manually, right? When they go out and try to find quotations, they will have to contact multiple freight forwarders and then, you know, probably put the information into an Excel file and just do some comparison between all of them, right? So you kind of automate and facilitate the process, right?

That's exactly how it is. And even if they do it themselves, typically what's important to note is both what you mentioned, there's a lot of manual work in it. It's very time-consuming. But then on top of that, it's also a sure way to only access a very small portion of the full market. For example, a Dutch shipper of ours might not be aware of the Chinese forwarders that very well can service them on the sea freight element of their requirement, for example. And we might be able to offer them not only, okay, look, these Chinese freight forwarders have very interesting rates for these shipments, but also that these companies Cross-border trust issues are a lot bigger, right? If you work with, as a Dutch company with a Dutch company, your trust level is somewhat higher. It's easier to find that trust. But if you want to work with a Chinese company as a Dutch smaller shipper, it's harder to know, okay, is this, am I doing the right thing? Is this company trustworthy, etc.? With us, you know, it's trustworthy because we have the, you know, other users of that same partner in China. which have verified, okay, this is a good partner to work with, and therefore you can start selecting from a much wider base of solution providers, freight forwarders. So it's on top of the difficulty of finding or comparing freight forwarders, there's also a difficulty in finding all the freight forwarders that might be of interest in the market.

What kind of difference are we talking about when you're looking at rates from Different for others. What kind of variations do you have? Are we talking about 10%, 20%, 30% sometimes a difference in terms of pricing for the exact same service?

Yeah. So that is another note, by the way, talking about the problem when you compare as a smaller shipper yourself. The exact same rates or exact same services are really difficult to define in many cases for these shippers. The Incoterms might be different, the type of company might be different. So it's— that increases the difficulty of comparison for SMEs. But to come back to your question, the differences for exactly the same service might vary strongly across different types of modalities, regions. So for example, for the US route, right, Europe to the US, differences might be up to 10%, 20%. And on the current rates, that's massive. On the China route, you see the prices coming down very strongly. And I'm talking about sea rates, by the way, right now. Coming down very strong. They have come down already. And you see that those changes become slightly smaller, but it remains between the most expensive offerings on our platform and the lowest offerings on our platform. there's still, for example, 15-20% difference in the market. So those differences are quite big. And then on air freight, it's even bigger, the differences. And similar for train freight, which we see a strong growth in as well.

Yeah, so when it comes to the quotation, as you mentioned, how can you get the price from the other forwarders? And how many forwarders or how many quotations do you have when you provide a comparison to your clients?

So, both of those questions are highly dependent on the specific situation that we're in. But what we try to do is, because we are a startup, of course, we try to get our marketplace to work for specific regions, and then we can focus our clients and our client acquisition, customer acquisition, to clients that are using that region as a source, for example, for their for the produce, et cetera. In doing so, we managed to, for those regions, build up the network in a way that we have the rates in our system. So once the quote is— the request is entered, the rates come out automatically. We don't have to go there and ask them. We have them in our system. We know what their rates are. So it pops up. It's just calculated automatically. But for other routes where we haven't built that capability yet, because we didn't focus there yet, we do have to go out there and ask them. We typically try to not do that unless an existing client from the other route where we do most business for just wants us to help with it, right? Then we do it as a service. But we try to focus as much as we can on getting a marketplace to work in a specific region, build our network there, and then go to the next.

How do you make sure that those freight forwarders update their information regularly? Because obviously those pricing change every day.

Yeah. So, for air freight, it's indeed that often that it changes. But the spot market rates for sea freight typically are somewhat more stable, let's say 2 weeks. Over the past months, that hasn't been the case. You know, it came down so quickly that they keep posting these new rates. But these forwarders are quite— they lose business. They know they are losing business if they don't update you frequently enough on the rates that go down. So, as soon as we have this serious business with them, that's a thing for us. We, by balancing the two sides of a platform, right, you need sufficient supply to satisfy the demand. But it's the other way around as well. For the demand to be interested in the supply— sorry, for the supply to be interested in the demand that we can generate over the platform for their services, there needs to be sufficient demand. And as soon as we have freight forwarders that get sufficient demand from our side, so in other words, they get plenty of business, then they start updating regularly because they know, okay, This is a source of business for us. I need to be sure that they get the rates because if they don't, the business is going to go somewhere else.

Yeah. And also, I'm trying to be in the chair of a shipper. You know, if I use your platform, I don't want to be watching 50 different quotations, right? So how do you ensure that you get the best? And all I'm interested is probably 5 or 6. But I can do some quick comparisons. So, are you able to actually kind of filter and just highlight the most interesting quotation to your clients?

Yeah. So, that's actually what we are currently working on strongly, how we filter the offering in such a way that always the most relevant comes up. But what you see is that if a certain level of trustworthiness is satisfied, in other words, there are rating is above 4.5, for example. I'm just saying something, right? Calling some numbers. But let's say that trustworthiness is satisfied. And typically right now, our partners that are active on the platform, we sort of give the CargoPod stamp, okay, we know these are trustworthy, right? So all the offerings are relevant. And once that's the case, in many cases, you see that companies will just decide based on the rate. So, the most interesting rate at that moment in time. That's typically what we see. And therefore, you know, filtering on the rate, given the first worthiness quality is satisfied, that is a good filter already.

And do you rate your suppliers based on responsiveness, effectiveness? Timely shipment. I mean, there are so many criteria that you can bring in, right? Other than just price.

Yeah, exactly. So what we are doing is we are now collecting a lot of information already on certain elements that we know we want to start showing at some point, but we're not showing them yet because we want to make sure the data is sufficient to actually say something about this partner. And then we have some more rudimentary ways of providing the experience of previous clients by just asking reviews. So we ask them to review and there's a general review and then there's specific reviews on specific topics like, for example, what you mentioned.

Okay.

So how many forwarders do you have on your platform so far?

That is a very difficult question to ask. I— you need to go into more specifics, I would say. We have quite a lot of them, but on specific regions, the group is smaller. And with us, the difference between a forwarder being on the platform and not is also an imprecise definition, I would say. Meaning with what I mentioned before, some of the forwards, we have all the quotes in the system. So as soon as we get a request, the quotes are automatically generated. And some of the ones that we are just recently started working with, first we see, okay, how does it work together before we integrate them fully in the system, right? So are they already part of a platform or not? But order of magnitude are— Yeah.

Do you have any criteria to let them join your platform before, kind of the suppliers' evaluation before you let them join your platform?

Right now, it is very much a process that comes through one of our employees. So typically, it's freight forwarders that we have heard in the marketplace are good solutions. So obviously we talk to a lot of our clients, but also to a lot of people that are not yet our clients or might not become our clients. And what we do is, okay, so who do you work with now? What are the rates like? How do they compare? And whenever we hear good names, we start adding them. We started out with about maybe 60 to 70 different freight forwarders just to get them in our network to understand, okay, where are your rates at? And we would just request them rates to just understand, okay, sort of where generally, where are you in the space in terms of rates and quality of service. And then in the Netherlands, it's somewhat easier for us to get like anecdotal evidence on the quality of service that they have. That's much harder, for example, when you look at China for us, right? That's a bit more challenging to get information on the quality of service, etc.

Just to go back on what you mentioned earlier about the lack of transparency, do you have sometimes 3PL who actually were reluctant to be compared? They don't want to join your platform because they don't want to see— they don't want to be compared with cheaper offers in the market. And I'm trying to think about the larger 3PLs here without mentioning any names, who obviously tend to be more expensive in comparison with the smaller or medium-sized freight forwarders sometimes.

Yeah. I think for the largest 3PLs, to get to that point first, um, the largest 3PLs, they tend to be of no interest at all to our type of clients. They're way too expensive.

Yeah, okay, yeah, because you're targeting SMEs.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's exactly how it works. And but that's not to say that, for example, with with parcel shipments, if they need to sample from somewhere or something, then, of course, these networks from FedEx, et cetera, they are— or DHL, they are very relevant. But this is a completely different type of business, of course, what they are doing.

Yeah.

So, that's where they are relevant to our customers. But in all the other spaces, they are not really relevant to our customers and we don't really work with them. We have good rates with some of them for relative for them, but compared to what the others can offer, the other partners that we have, there's just no chance they could They can compete. So, and then have some been reluctant? Yes, some have been reluctant. What we try to do is 2 things that I think are important there. The first is we try to really integrate with their way of working. So we really try to do everything to make sure that they do not have to massively change anything to be able to work with us. And then for them, generally, it is a way to just to add business.

Yeah.

Right. We have had the question once where it was, okay, so I know I'm relatively more expensive, but we do offer a lot more service than others. And then what typically our response is, well, if that's the case, you know, it should show from the actual data that we are collecting on your performance and also our personal experience. Because as I mentioned before, originally we did everything through email. So there's a lot of contact, human contact between some of our team and their team. And we just know the way they work quite quickly because of that. And at the time, it was— we knew they did more, they offered a little bit more service, and we were willing to pay a little bit more at the time for that, or our clients were. But there's a limit to that. And yeah, that question is a fair question. Of course, there's this— But we try to, in every way possible, and that's also what we discuss with these freight forwarders, to not get a race to the bottom on our platform, right? That's why it's so important for us to really have data on the quality of service as well, on the type of company that you're working with.

Yeah.

It's a Dutch company or it's a Chinese company working together with a Dutch company. All that kind of information needs to come with the rates because there's players in the market and we know those players that offer, always offer cheaper, lower rates. But their way of working is so different that it, for example, with an air freight shipment where it usually might be 7 days from China to the Netherlands, for example, in total, right, with everything. With them, it typically is 2 weeks. You know, that kind of information needs to be there before you put them on the platform because otherwise a client is always going to be like, well, Why would I not choose for this cheaper option? But then in hindsight, finding out this is not actually the same thing. This is just a lot slower.

Yeah, so we are talking about the platform, the transparency in the cargo lot that you have, the customer. So does your company actually handle the logistic process to make it more efficient? Kind of, you also handle the customs clearance, cargo pickup? Or you use another third party?

So what we try to do is remove ourselves operationally from the logistics process, right? So we do build the software that is used to handle the operation process. For example, we have a platform built where clients can automatically track their shipments They can collect their documents that they require for the shipments, but also the suppliers can supply the documents there that they need to supply. A shipper or a receiver or consignee can upload their documents, and then the customs agent— that is a third party, we don't do that— can— or it either is the freight forwarder that does the full operation, or it is another third party that can be chosen through our platform as well. We don't do any of that ourselves. We are not a logistics company, or at least we are involved in logistics as a software company, not as some knowledge player on customs, etc. So, it all is collected and managed through the platform. It's just not that we do any of the processes. What happens now is that we, as a service, sort of do manage that all the documents and everything is in time. Arrives in time, etc. But we just haven't come around to it yet, building that to be automatic. But it's relatively easy to do that automatically, right? You can check whether something is there, you know, when it has to arrive or when something arrives. So you need, you know, okay, we need to start sending reminders to the relevant parties right now. That's something that we are working on, and step by step we keep adding that. But so far, yeah, that's— so we are involved, but we are mostly doing stuff that just, you know, we can automate ourselves.

So how can you get real-time tracking from the forwarders? Kind of all of the information come from them and you are using your platform to show the information to your client. So, how can you get the latest information from them to get your data always the latest one?

Yeah. So, the platform is a hub for the different stakeholders in the process. And what that means is that as soon as there is a planning available, if let's say we are still talking about the container that needs to come from Ningbo and it needs to go to Rotterdam. As soon as the planning is available, the Chinese agent can add the details of the planning to our platform and the client will see that. As soon as the container number is available, they upload the container number and we start collecting the information directly from the carrier, right? And in that same way, that works pretty much for all the shipments. The one thing that we haven't done this for yet, which is also a priority thing for us and also availability in the market of data is that we didn't do it for air freight yet because our focus mainly is on sea freight. We do air freight as well, but we just have a lot fewer shipments of those. So, we haven't looked into the tracking there yet. But, for example, train freight, there's not really a proper between Europe and China. I'm still talking About— there's not really a proper way to track that yet, but the data is typically available from the source of the freight forwarder that handles the train shipment in China. And they can then also provide that so that in the platform, making sure that the client is always up to date on the latest information that is available in the chain, which obviously is often imperfect.

So there is information that you have in your platform already input by the different freight forwarders. But can a freight forwarder respond to an RFQ even if he doesn't have any rates already into your platform? If something new for him and he wants to get the business, can he actually— does he get notified that there's a potential customer for him and he can respond to that in a dynamic way?

Not at the moment. Also because that's a bit of the part of the not wanting to create a race to the bottom. We don't want to open up a marketplace where you have like a job and then they can start offering lower and lower.

Yeah, they can start fighting on rates. Okay. All right.

I get it. We want to prevent that from happening. We want them to be confident of the service that they offer at the rates that they offer, and then we are not going to pressure them to go lower and lower and lower, just, you know.

So in the future, do you think that you will have the kind of a logistic platform that can show the live price comparison to your clients? Kind of some website have done like the Skyscanner in the flight tickets or the other website for the accommodation or hotels price comparisons, as you may know.

I expect that this will go live on our main routes of operation in January already, a version of this. So of course it's not going to be exactly the same, but yes, definitely that's where we're going.

It becomes a booking of freight forwarding. But so competition, Martin, you must have some. What would you consider as your competitors for this kind of marketplace?

Yeah, so that question is always sort of two-sided. We compete mostly with other freight forwarders that also offer their services through our platform, right? So—

Okay.

If you take the example of Booking.com, there is Booking.com that can compete with hotels where clients book directly with hotel instead of through Booking.com. We have the same thing. So that's the actual competition in the market. If you talk about the technology and our position in the market, the way we do it, the way we approach it, I think the one example that you probably know is Freightos. Freightos, they—

Freightos, yeah, in Israel.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They are doing a similar thing. Of course, they have more. They also have more just a freight marketplace, not just with the freight forwarding services included, but they do also do it with the freight forwarding services included. But, you know, typically larger 3PLs that are on the platform doing their offering and also strong in different routes, different markets than we are. We don't really see them as a competitor here in the Netherlands yet. Of course, this can change.

Okay.

But yeah, so I would say that comes closest.

So Freightos would be the closest competitor for you. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, Hoi.

Yeah, so I see that on your platform most of the language I use is the Dutch language. So is this your only focus customer? You focus on the local market only? What kind of clients are you—

The website should also be provided in English. I don't know, did you mention it? Did you say it was only Dutch?

She she was logging from Ireland, so that's why the the Dutch version came up. Yeah, I don't know. When I look at it, it was in English for me.

The version is in the Netherlands.

Okay.

So now you have an English.

More about your customer, what regions or what countries of the customer, the customer segmentation that you are working on.

Yeah, no, so we focused on Dutch customers, but we do also service some in the UK, quite a few in Belgium, which is our neighbor, of course, and Western Germany happens, but most of the customers are located in the Netherlands. And we actually, we did do pretty much everything. So German customers, Belgian customers, UK customers, because our network can service them. Our network of freight forwarders, service providers on our platform can service all of these markets pretty good. Like, their presence is good enough to do that. But we see that by focusing our customer acquisition on a specific market, we are just able to build better for this specific group. And then after that, we can expand again into these markets more actively. So our focus is the Netherlands, but we do offer services to clients outside of the Netherlands.

Okay, let's talk. Yeah, yeah, thanks.

What do you think, what makes your companies outstanding in the market so the customer will choose your platform, choose the Tivolo instead of other logistic forwarders?

Yeah, with us, they always know that they get the best offering that's available in the market and they can manage the whole process conveniently from one place. So, I think that's a new—

Okay. How do you make money, Maarten, with your platform?

Yeah, we put a margin on all quotes. And so, when a client pays, we take out our margin and the rest of the money goes to the executing freight forwarder.

Okay. I want to talk quickly about your, the company, CargoPlot as a startup company. What is your current funding stage? Are you raising funding right now or?

No, but we expect to start Q1 of next year, 2023.

Okay. All right. How many employees do you have currently?

All included? 9.

Okay. How many engineers? Is this all done in the Netherlands or are you outsourcing to—

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Small one. 3 engineers, of which those are all in the Netherlands, including 2 other, 4 others, not everyone full-time, 2 full-time, 2 part-time. And then we have a couple of people that help us in sales that are not located in the Netherlands.

Okay. What would be, you know, what would be your biggest challenge as a co-founder? I know, I understand that you have 2 other co-founders in Rhino and growing the business. What keeps you awake at night?

Well, that always changes. Regularly.

But if you had something, if you had one big headache which is ongoing, you know, as you develop a business. Yeah.

At the moment, the reduction of the coming down of the rates in the logistics industry is a bit challenging for our numbers, especially, you know, yeah. Just in general, that is not great. If there's a, what, 80% decrease in rates in a couple of months' time, that's going to do something to your revenue numbers.

Because you take a commission, right? It's commission-based.

Yes, it's a commission. And although we see that our commission is a lot more resilient than the overall revenue, it still hurts quite a bit, especially in the beginning.

Okay.

So in the future, do you have any plan to scale up your team or scale up your customer segments?

Definitely, yes, yes. We are choosing to focus mostly because that way we can just offer the clients that we service within that focus area the best. So, um, but as soon as we can and we have the resources, we definitely will scale up as quickly as possible across different regions so that we can service the clients in those regions the best way possible as well. Yeah, definitely.

Where do you see your company or solution in 3 to 5 years from now? Do you want to be as big as FredOS? Or, you know, I know that FredOS is actually going public now. What is your plan? What kind of, you know, Long-term strategy do you have?

Yeah, so I think with the solution that we have— is the connection still okay?

It's working, yeah.

Okay, sorry. Yes, as big and possibly bigger. With the solution that we have, I think we can service a lot of clients. We have a current strong focus on a specific group of clients, which I mentioned, the SMEs. That operate in the spot market. So, they need to buy their freight services in the spot market. Otherwise, you know, they are better off buying elsewhere. But I have different ideas about how we can expand our solution without much change, actually, but offer the same solution fixing similar problems for bigger companies as well. And I would like to expand there. So, it's both in regions Where we should be active across Europe, across Asia, across the US. But also in terms of product, we— I think we can adapt and start helping somewhat larger customers as well. Both of those should be active within those— that timeframe that you just mentioned.

Okay.

And thereby we should become as big or bigger as Freightos, hopefully.

Okay, Hui, final question before we wrap up.

Yeah, it's so interesting to have your sharing today. So maybe in a nutshell, can you, in one sentence, can you describe the key missions of your company or the most interesting thing in your company and the passion when you run Yes, bringing transparency to the logistics industry.

Yeah, that's really what we are trying to do.

Okay, that's a good statement. That's a very respectable mission. Obviously, the industry is quite large. I've got some quickfire questions just to wrap up the interview. So get ready, Martin. Cats or dogs?

Ooh, dogs.

Window or aisle?

Aisle.

One of your favorite movies you watched recently? Just one movie that comes to your mind.

Oh, that's very hard. 12 Years a Slave, I thought was a very, very, well, yeah, good movie. Not fun.

Okay, good. What's your favorite sandwich?

That's really difficult.

Or something you eat all the time at lunch, something like a regular.

Let's go with— I wouldn't know the English word for it, so let's go with a bacon and egg sandwich.

Okay. All right. What's your most used app on your phone? The app that you always look at?

If it is not WhatsApp, which I still use as my— yeah, it is Financial Times.

Financial Times. Okay.

The newspaper.

What's your favorite tool to build or communicate within your team?

That's WhatsApp, to the frustration of my team, probably.

Okay. All right. So using WhatsApp internally as well.

Yeah, well, actually our systems are— we use Teams and we use Discord, but I am a bit hard-headed with that sometimes and come back to WhatsApp.

If you could describe the rest of your life in a couple of words, what would it be? Where do you see yourself in 20, 30 years from now when you get older?

So a couple of words, I would say exciting. I have, I think, a fairly exciting life. And where I am in 20 to 30 years, yeah, running a company which is accomplishing in a big way the mission that we have today, the transparency in the industry, I expect.

Okay, great. Thank you very much, Martin, for this interview. It was great. Thanks a lot, Huy, for all those great questions. We talked a lot about the platform today, but I think it was interesting to understand how those, you know, that platform works and how do you actually work and interact with the different stakeholders. I think you've got a very interesting product and I'm sure a lot of companies would be interested to use it. Again, this was Martin de Rijck, co-founder and CEO of Cargoplot, joining the ChainTech Show. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.