FrontM, the “Intelligent Collaboration Anywhere®” platform for the maritime industry, enhances connectivity between ship-shore teams with telehealth, video conferencing, remote assistance, tracking and monitoring for ships.
The startup has raised $1.5 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Jenson Funding Partners, Tradeworks.vc, Motion Ventures and a syndicate of MarTech investors. With the investment, FrontM will accelerate its mission to solve the connectivity and efficiency challenges that maritime businesses and their mobile workforces or customers face when operating in remote and low bandwidth environments.
Two million seafarers and up to 50 million remote workers in various ocean industries face day-to-day collaboration barriers, leading to poor crew productivity, engagement, and welfare.
FrontM is the maritime superapp platform and app marketplace, optimized for low bandwidth environments, with an exciting array of partner integrations and app rollouts in the pipeline. It operates a multi-sided business model that connects ships and crews with maritime services and solutions providers, using Edge Computing and AI technology to effectively maximize the value of available bandwidth of existing satellite connections.
Kiran Venkatesh, Co-founder and CEO of FrontM, said: “Since our Covid-pivot, we evolved our maritime-focused product roadmap and completed a range of initial rollouts. I’m hugely excited to have the backing of eminent maritime investors who share our vision and are equally passionate about digitally empowering people.”
The maritime digital industry will be worth $345 billion by 2030, according to Maritime innovation consultancy Thetius. The FrontM platform is well placed to help maritime companies and service providers unlock new possibilities in this rapidly evolving market which also includes new verticals such as the new generation of satellite-IoT, direct-to-device and LEO/MEO (Low and Medium Earth Orbit) connected segments.
