Our investment in Dexory: modernising warehouses, the beating heart of the supply chain

Supply chain resilience has emerged as one of the biggest macro headwinds for both business and political leaders to contend with in the 2020s. If the pandemic exposed vulnerabilities and caused mass disruption to manufacturing and trade, the tragedy of the war in Ukraine compounded supply chain troubles in many critical sectors and kept it firmly high on the news agenda.

Of course there are many complex and interconnected moving parts of this puzzle, including procurement, manufacturing, packaging, shipping, energy, tracking and distribution. But what stands at the beating heart of the supply chain is the warehouse, where goods from around the world are stored, sorted, and distributed.

It’s here that major logistics providers are dealing with a myriad of additional pain points - primarily a major acute labour shortage in logistics around the world coupled with a rise in consumer demand for highly accurate and immediate order fulfilment all the time.

While many industry reports have sought to underscore the ‘temporary’ nature of some of these shocks, it’s clear that there’s a structural need for companies to revamp supply chain strategies to enhance resilience, sustainability, and collaboration in response to events of the past few years.

The connecting thread here is increasing digital transformation as a matter of strategic importance. We’re at an inflection point where investment in automation is badly needed to not only combat labour shortages and meet the high demands of the modern consumer - but enable warehouses to undergo long overdue modernisation.

Enter Dexory, our newest $19 million Series A partnership which we’re thrilled to announce today. Through a mixture of hardware and sophisticated data analytics, founding team Andrei, Oana and Adrian have created a value proposition which promises to unlock warehouse data to drive operational efficiency in a unique and seamless way.

On the hardware side, Dexory’s autonomous robots are capable of capturing rich image and sensor data from across a warehouse. The hardware can perform a full warehouse scan in just a matter of hours - scanning up to 15,000 pallets or rack spaces an hour, compared to 240 per hour for humans.

But what makes Dexory particularly special is an advanced data analytics layer which acts as a real-time warehouse intelligence tool. The DexoryView platform starts by giving customers an immediate view of the core hub of their supply chain - from detailed location of goods to highly accurate information on stock levels and locations.

And beyond tracking inventory, DexoryView can then also be used as a ‘digital twin’ replica of the warehouse to help not only manage, but also to improve warehouse performance. This allows for the software to optimise, simulate and predict future scenarios, and iterate layout design with time.

The impact here is clear - immediate warehouse visibility to help logistics providers tackle acute labour shortages and intense demand, and a rich data platform with the potential to centralise and improve operations at the warehouse level.

With our Series A partnership, we hope to help Andrei, Oana, and Adrian on their journey to transform traditional warehouse management practices. Supply chain shocks will continue to come and go, but, with the help of Dexory, companies of the future should have the ultimate operating system to respond seamlessly and effectively.