Roambee, supply-chain monitoring provider, wins more funding as it addresses vaccine distribution

Hot on the heels of announcing that a Covid-19 manufact­­urer is a client, the Santa Clara, CA, data-services firm Roambee has announced a new (“Series B1”) funding round of $18 million, and an intention to undergo another funding round later this spring.

As to the client, Roambee only says that it is “one of the largest US-based vaccine makers,” and that it is one of 300 global enterprises that are clients, across a variety of industries but concentrated in food distribution, automotive, consumer electronics, chemicals and life sciences. It also counts DHL, Kuehne+Nagel and CEVA Logistics—all major freight forwarders for pharma—as partners and clients.

There are quite a few IT or data services companies that offer to manage pharma supply chains; what makes Roambee’s approach different? According to Sanjay Sharma, CEO, the company has developed its own sensor/datalogger hardware in addition to the tracking and analytics software—and provides these as a self-service, managed-services, or platform-as-a-service (PAAS) offering. For self-service, a company acquires a volume of sensors on a fixed monthly subscription, and uses them for as many supply-chain movements as they choose. For managed services, cost is on a per-trip basis; and for PAAS, the Roambee service can be white-labeled, and its sensors combined with a client’s sensor or datalogger choices.

For a pharma manufacturer shipping its products, the service can be integrated, via APIs, with the various data-collection systems offered by logistics companies, security or packaging vendors and others, once the manufacturer provides the subscriber access to any services it uses.

Sharma recently authored a blogpost noting how one of its pharma clients had the problem of its transportation group driving toward lowest-cost service, while its logistics group was driving toward most reliable, failure-proof service, creating cost and performance conflicts. Integrating the two functions’ goals and standards enable lower-cost yet highly reliable supply chain execution, Sharma believes.