Singapore-based Portcast won the inaugural Captain’s Table last night in Hong Kong. The global maritime startup pitch competition saw six finalists battle it out for a $25,000 winning cheque in front of six judges in an event televised live on Splash.
Founded in 2017, Portcast brings predictive data analytics to the maritime industry, helping logistics companies with demand forecasting, automated pricing and capacity utilisation. The machine learning platform uses real-time external data to predict cargo flows.
Judges praised the pitch made by Portcast CEO, Nidhi Gupta, saying the timing was really great to enter the market and take a significant slice of the predicative analytics business.
“The advantage that customers get by sharing their data is that we bring that external knowledge, we’ve kept that real time external indices which actually matter and impact trade movement and combine that with the internal dataset to provide predictions,” Gupta said while being probed by judges on how her product, which is close to commercialisation, actually works.
The other finalists in this inaugural event were Quaychain, Marified, Tow-botics Systems, Searoutes and Irwin Rotational Linings, a diverse range of companies presenting solutions ranging from optimisation of the bunker supply chain to refabrication of old pipes.
The Captain’s Table, organised by the Young Professionals In Shipping Network (YPSN) HK, will return next year cementing its position as the most global maritime startup pitch event.
