Harbor Lab, a Greek provider of digital tools to manage port expenses, has announced winning Great Eastern Shipping — India’s biggest private shipping company — as a customer.
The deal is characteristic of the maturing of Greece’s fledgling maritime tech scene, which is expanding beyond its initial growth phase, attracting new investors, making first acquisitions and cracking new markets.
Harbor Lab, which was providing services to about 260 vessels when TradeWinds first reported about it in the summer of 2021, now boasts a serviced fleet of 1,300 ships.
Most of its clients are still major players in its Greek home, such as Star Bulk, Kyklades Maritime and Goldenport.
The company, however, has already expanded outside its narrow national base with clients like Zeaborn. The Great Eastern deal is a big step in this direction, marking Harbor Lab’s first inroad into the Indian market.
Great Eastern has more than 40 tankers and bunkers.
“We are looking forward to leveraging the Harbor Lab platform to manage all agency activities, from appointment scheduling to document management and approval process,” Great Eastern chief operating officer Ankush Gupta said.
“We expect that this will help us simplify communication and improve coordination.”
The Great Eastern project is a milestone for Harbor Lab from a technical aspect as well: for the first time, it is installing its tools in an end-to-end integration with a voyage management system — provided by Veson Nautical — and an accounting system from software giant SAP.
Undertaking more ambitious projects is a natural outgrowth of attracting fresh money and investors.
About a year ago, Harbor Lab completed a €6.1m ($6.7m) funding round that attracted a new group of investors such as VentureFriends and Speedinvest, in addition to original backers that included Ioannis Martinos’ Signal Ventures.
Founder and chief executive Antonis Malaxianakis has already put that money to use. Apart from hiring more programmers and support staff to boost its Athens headcount to more than 60s, the company made its first acquisitions.
In December, it purchased two software products from Osiris: SOFeXchange, which digitalises and standardises statements of facts; and DEMeXchange, which serves as a digital demurrage calculation tool.
“We are immensely proud of our first acquisition as it is a giant leap forward for the transformational shift we want to bring,” said Malaxianakis.
