Passport, the Modern International Shipping Carrier, Raises $12M Series A

Passport announced it has raised $12M in Series A funding, led by M13 with participation from Resolute Ventures, Precursor, Kleiner Perkins, RiverPark, and Republic. The company plans to use the funds to invest in its parcel supply chain network and continue to scale operations across the board.

Led by CEO Alex Yancher, Passport is a modern international shipping carrier built for e-commerce and direct to consumer brands. The company takes on all of the painful aspects of managing cross-border shipping for merchants, including:

• Directly intercepting and handling customer service inquiries with a highly-trained in-house team;
• Calculating and collecting taxes and duties directly in the merchant’s cart;
• Helping merchants stay in compliance with new UK and EU VAT rules;
• Navigating and optimizing a complex global network of carriers and customs brokers;
• Helping merchants in regulated industries stay in compliance with country-specific requirements, particularly in higher visibility categories like cosmetics and supplements.

“Legacy international shipping carriers were started well before the internet – some are over 100 years old – and were built primarily to transport documents and wholesale goods. While they have built impressive logistics networks, they are fundamentally not well-equipped to serve the needs of today’s ecommerce companies,” said Yancher. “The fastest growing buyers of international shipping are now ecommerce merchants, and until now their only options were to rely on a patchwork of solutions built on top of legacy carriers that have little to no software offering. At Passport, we’re able to offer them both a world-class logistics network and the software and support necessary to deliver a consistent post-purchase brand experience anywhere in the world.”

Since its founding, Passport has shipped nearly 3M packages to countries all over the world from ecommerce and DTC brands like Betabrand, Native and Bombas, helping customers grow their international shipping volume by 43% year-over-year.

“Alex and his team at Passport have tackled the incredibly complex business of international shipping by blending their deep international parcel logistics expertise with beautifully executed software and support that helps any ecommerce brand create a consistent experience, no matter what country their customers are in,” said Gautam Gupta, Partner at M13. “Today’s ecommerce retailers can’t afford to be without an international shipping provider, and Passport offers them a scalable, easy solution that makes it a no-brainer for anyone wondering how to reach consumers outside the US. We’re proud to lead their Series A funding and are excited to see them continue to gain traction as consumers increasingly rely on ecommerce in a post-COVID world.”
Source: Passport