Founders' Spotlight Series | conbo.ai
Learn more about Motion Ventures' portfolio companies through these founders' personal stories.
With several thousand years worth of history, it is exciting to witness the next wave of innovators and entrepreneurs challenging the status quo and using technology to challenge age-old problems in the maritime industry. The Founders Spotlight Series is a platform dedicated to showcasing the remarkable journeys of maritime startups founders who have transformed their ideas into reality.
Through these compelling narratives, we will dive into the minds of these game-changers, exploring their motivations, discovering how they overcame obstacles and navigated uncharted waters, and understanding the lasting impact they have made on their industry and beyond.
Join us on this captivating journey through the Founders Spotlight Series as we unveil the stories of maritime trailblazers reshaping the industry.
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conbo.ai: Visibility with No Added CapEx
The maritime tech industry is riding the wave of the digital era, driven by critical needs for robustness, efficiency, safety, and sustainability. At the heart of this transformation is a fundamental requirement: data. Accurate and standardised data is essential for effective transformation, however, this process faces significant challenges due to outdated solutions and isolated data silos. These silos result in inaccurate and incomprehensible data that is non-standardised and difficult to integrate seamlessly. This fragmented approach presents significant challenges when existing systems cannot simply be replaced.
Enters conbo.ai, a pioneering data generator and analysis tool crafted to tackle these issues head-on. conbo.ai provides hardware-free, real-time asset tracking, and deep analysis, allowing for tracking and analysing all moving objects within a facility by only using existing cameras. Integrating seamlessly with the TIC4.0 ecosystem, conbo enables port authorities, terminal operators, warehouses, and logistics facilities to fully utilise their existing cameras to provide more value and functionalities than what they could have previously. conbo.ai's capabilities extend beyond mere visibility. Its expanding toolkit includes applications such as workforce dashboards, vehicle booking systems, and carbon emissions tracking — ensuring that the data generated can drive further efficiencies and sustainable practices. conbo.ai is poised to redefine the future of logistics, making operations more transparent, efficient, green, and safe.
Fig. 1. An example of conbo.ai’s dashboard and mobile app interface - showcasing an overview of traffic flow and timing analysis, enabling customers to track events, users, and actions required.
The Founding Story
The story of conbo.ai begins with the unique professional journey of its founders, Sabi and Eran. They met while working at an aviation company where Sabi was the head of development and Eran led the flight tests team as a pilot. Despite the typical professional tension between development and test flight teams, Sabi and Eran formed a strong bond that transformed the company dynamics. This friendship led to immense product success, culminating in one of the company's biggest sales and a successful IPO.
Over the years, Eran became the product leader and later a senior manager in the business development team for visual-based intelligence products, while Sabi became an expert in AI and computer vision. After an eight-year journey together, they decided to leverage their extensive experience in data analysis to create conbo.ai, driven by their vision and goals.
Fig. 2. conbo.ai’s Founding Team. From left to right, Reuven Sabi (Co-founder and CTO) and Eran Pereg (Co-founder and CEO).
Early Beginnings
In its early days, conbo.ai focused on developing Artificial Intuition, a sophisticated technology that leverages advanced algorithms and machine learning models to mimic human intuition for decision-making, trend prediction, and problem-solving. This broad focus led to a lack of clear direction and some costly mistakes. However, these experiences proved invaluable, teaching Eran and Sabi crucial lessons about customer needs and market demands.
A turning point came when conbo.ai received a government grant and participated in an accelerator program. These opportunities connected them with key clients, including a government entity that needed enhanced visibility tools for its ports. The entity sought to utilise existing on-site data generators, such as IoT devices and cameras, to improve operational visibility. This discovery of visibility gaps in critical locations inspired Eran and Sabi to explore the Maritime & Supply Chain domain more deeply.
After a year of intensive research, discussions, and demonstrations, Eran and Sabi realised that their expertise in intelligence products was highly relevant to the challenges faced in the Maritime & Supply Chain industries. This insight led to conbo.ai’s transition from a deep-tech company to a product-led company, focusing on addressing the specific needs of logistic facilities, with focus on ports and terminals.
Today, conbo.ai’s hardware-free approach not only extends the reach of RF-IDs, telematics solutions, and GPS but does so in a more accurate, detailed, and flexible manner – all without any capital expenditure (CapEx).
Fig. 3. A detailed view of how conbo.ai utilises multiple cameras and their computer vision solution to create a single source of truth for the actions and locations of container-handling equipment, enabling hardware-free tracking.
Fig. 4. A deeper look at how conbo.ai reconstructs the journey of trucks, generating accurate and dynamic time estimators (such as navigation systems).
Growth and Evolution
A pivotal moment in conbo.ai’s journey came from a customer who emphasised, "It is all about the data." This realisation shifted conbo.ai’s focus toward prioritising data quality – accuracy, standardisation, and relevance.
A notable case study involves a leading terminal operator. Initially, this operator planned to implement conbo.ai’s solutions solely for gate operations. However, impressed by the early results, they quickly expanded the use cases to include yard, vessel, and train operations. This rapid adoption across multiple areas demonstrated conbo.ai’s ability to significantly enhance operational efficiency, even in a modern automated terminal.
Despite its early days, conbo.ai has already achieved remarkable milestones for its customers, including an 11% reduction in turnaround times — the duration at which a truck spends at a facility or terminal, covering all activities from arrival to departure, including by not limited to Arrival and Check-In, Loading and Unloading, Paperwork and Documentation, and Waiting Times; and a significant decrease in CO2 emissions by 250,000 tons across one terminal in a year. Their solution has greatly improved operational efficiency, substantially increasing customers’ earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) by an impressive US$ 3 million annually*.
Fig. 5. Screenshot of conbo.ai’s CO2 emissions toolkit.
Currently, conbo.ai is developing a marketplace that will allow customers to sell their datasets to potential buyers, further enhancing the value for their customers by creating an additional revenue stream. In this way, conbo.ai has crafted a unique niche as a tool that leverages data to unlock the potential for customers to do more. Together, the team is committed to enhancing both sustainability and profitability for clients.
Looking Ahead
conbo.ai is not just a data generator; it offers deep analysis, actionable insights and an ecosystem of value-led applications designed to leverage this data for concrete use cases. From reducing carbon emissions to implementing dynamic booking systems, conbo.ai’s toolkit is set to grow and provide more real-time management solutions for customers and their clients.
Among the many exciting developments, the founding team is particularly thrilled to announce that they will soon have a terminal entirely monitored by vision and AI, eliminating the need for outdated, complex hardware.
conbo.ai is on the brink of a revolution, and they’d like to invite you to join the ride! If you resonate with their vision, please reach out via their website (https://www.conbo.ai/contact).
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*The USD 3 million EBITDA is based on small to medium terminals
We'd love to hear your thoughts and maritime stories. Stay connected with us as we navigate through more maritime success stories in our next Founders’ Spotlight article, unveiling groundbreaking shifts that are shaping the future of maritime.