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Maritime Startups Accelerate With New Support And Funding

Maritime Startups Accelerate With New Support And Funding

GCaptain
Total Views: 390
May 16, 2019

PSA unboXed, the Singapore-based venture capital arm of PSA International, and Israeli-based theDOCK Innovation Hub have entered into an agreement to jumpstart innovative technologies that will benefit the port, maritime and supply chain sector.
 
The partnership between PSA unboXed and theDOCK will kick-start with the first large global maritime tech Hackathon which will be hosted in Israel, solely dedicated to a list of challenges which reflect the digital transformation needs in the port and shipping sector.

 “We are excited by the prospects of engaging creative idea and solution providers to tackle transformation of the maritime sector. Of specific interest will be areas such as ports and its adjacent spaces including maritime, logistics, and supply-chain.” said  Nir Gartzman, Co-Founder and COO at theDOCK. “All that is associated with containerized cargo flow. PSA unboXed has already participated in the Demo Day of our Wave1 PORTfolio startups and the Screening Day of Wave2, hence we are confident with our ability to cooperate together.” 

This announcement comes on the heels of a SUNY Maritime College’s NYC Maritime Hackathon sponsored by Seabury Maritime, Techstars Energy accelerator cosponsored by Kongsberg, Hamburg’s Schulte Group’s New Venture Capital arm INNOPORT, and PORTXL’s startup accelerator in Rotterdam and Singapore

“When gCaptain was launched over a decade ago, and again when we launched gTrax, the first ever AIS Tracking app, in 2019,  the technology investors fundamentally didn’t understand ships and maritime investors were wary of new technology. We had to bootstrap each which slowed the growth of gCaptain and caused the ultimate death of gTrax.” said gCaptain founder Captain John Konrad who is now CEO of the new maritime startup gShip. “But, pioneering efforts from companies like Flexport and Nautilus Labs have paved the way for investors on both sides.”

Konrad’s gShip was a recent finalist in the prestigious Masschallenge accelerator, is applying to Techstars and is working with angels to secure a large capital investment but… it hasn’t been all smooth sailing for gShips. “Yes, we applied to PortXL and never heard back from them. Maybe the fit wasn’t right or maybe something got lost in spam.” says Konrad. “So many programs are sprouting up it’s difficult to understand the benefits of each and find the right  fit.”

theDock’s Hackathon – cosponsored by Wartsilla – is the next big event for startups and will be geared towards technology that solves problems associated with coning/de-coning of containers,, port operation optimization, cybersecurity, and port-vessel communication. 

“We are very pleased with the prospects of partnership with large companies like PSA.” concluded Hannan Carmeli, Co-Founder and CEO of theDOCK. “Together with startups, we could push the envelope on technology innovation to benefit the sector,” 

Startups are encourage to apply to the hackathon today

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