Cold Chain Monitoring Startup TagBox Raises Angel Funding from Indian Angel Network And IAN Fund

Bengaluru-based cold chain monitoring solution provider TagBox has raised an undisclosed amount of angel investment from Indian Angel network and the IAN Fund. The funding round was led by IAN members Naveen Gupta and Dinesh Goel.

The startup plans to utilise the funds for product development, filing patents and global certifications for its entire tech stack and is currently focusing on cold chain solutions for pharma, F&V, dairy, meats, processed and frozen food, ecommerce and retail.

TagBox enables organisations to create reliable and sustainable Cold Chains with the use of IoT, Advanced Analytics, and Automation. It was founded in the year 2016, by Adarsh Kumar, Saumitra Singh, and Sameer Singh. TagBox helps organisations improve their cold chains by giving real-time visibility and predictive insights for an end to end cold chain health at any level of granularity. Ex. Box, pallet, cold room, refrigerated vehicle or retail store/pharmacy.

Commenting on the fund raise, Adarsh Kumar, Cofounder TagBox said, “We are incredibly privileged to be invested in by such an amazing investment network. We believe that IAN’s experience and in-depth knowledge would provide a significant boost to our quest to cost-effectively and reliably tag every single box that carries cold chain products, monitors its health real-time and predicts and prevent cold chain failures.”

The current cold chain industry is globally a $10Bn market, but the ecosystem is riddled with inefficiencies. The key problem areas in cold chains are:  

• Low or fragmented visibility and traceability into cold chain health and performance
• Inability to meet compliance requirements, leading to penalties  
• Product spoilage, shrinkage & expiry losses due to mismanagement and breakdowns
• Significant human dependence for quality control;
• very low automation: High Cold Chain cost (4X of regular supply chain)
• Low SLAs:  The current solutions are primarily ‘Hardware’ oriented and provide raw telemetry data to organisations in formats that can be barely used with limited data historical storage.

Addressing these challenges, Tagbox provides comprehensive solutions using IoT, Advanced Analytics, and Automation to integrate the client’s ERP data with sensor data for advanced analytics, thereby directly improving the cold chains.

Their hardware layer consists of Tag360 sensors that can monitor temperature, humidity, vibrations, and light; TagHub ultra-low power gateways which transmit data from Tag360 sensors to the cloud via wi-fi or cellular network and TagLink Mobile App can be used by authorised field personnel to transmit sensor data when needed, especially from restricted locations like ports or customs.

Commenting on the investment Naveen Gupta said, “There is no doubt that technology has given cold chain monitoring a significant boost, and space is growing at a rapid pace. We strongly believe that the solutions provided by TagBox, not only differentiates from other players but also has the potential substantially develop the future of India’s Food waste management.”

According to a Markets and Markets report, the cold chain monitoring market is expected to grow from $ 3.11 Bn in 2015 to $ 6.23 Bn by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 9.84% between 2016 and 2022. The report also finds that the cold chain monitoring market in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest rate between 2016 and 2022 on the back of the growing demand for food, increase in population relying on medication, and rapid urbanisation.

However, almost 40% of India’s total food production is lost in transit, wasted by consumers or damaged (according to the United Nations Development Program), and nearly 80% of medicines produced lose their potency due to inferior temperature controls during transport. “No doubt that the market has tremendous potential, but what differentiates us from others is delivering our tech efficiently, with precision and timeliness,” added Adarsh.

Some of the well-known global players in the cold chain monitoring space are US-based Sensitech, Inc., ORBCOMM, and Monnit Corp; and the Swiss-based Berlinger & Co. and ELPRO_BUCHS AG. The sector is growing rapidly opening doors for the emerging ventures. With the raised funding, will TagBox be able to fend off this rising competition on basis of factors such as efficiency, precision, and technology, will be worth watching.