HUUB

In 2019, HUUB, a U.Porto Spin-off company closed their seed financing round with an investment of 1.5 million euros from MAERSK, the largest maritime transport company in the world. The first investment from the multinational company in a startup rounds off Huub’s seed stage, which totals around 4.35 million euros in investment. In 2018, Huub had already received an investment in the order of 2.5 million euros from Pathena. Luis Roque, CEO of the company, claims that this partnership with Pathena would allow them to establish HUUB as “key players in the European supply chain industry”. Previously in 2016 the company had received another investment of 350 thousand euros, to develop their commercial capabilities by increasing their client portfolio and recruiting more talent.

Four former U.Porto students (Luis Roque, Pedro Santos, Tiago Craveiro and Tiago Paiva) founded Huub in 2015 and the company specializes in logistic operations in the fashion industry, offloading the logistics and operational processes of some of the largest fashion brands in the world. Their core business is the integrated management of supply chains in the fashion industry, allowing these brands and companies to focus on designing and selling new products, leaving the operational duties to Huub. Their main product, named SPOKE, is an application that offers total visibility on the operations of a company.

The entrepreneurs are expecting to close 2019 with a growth of around 200% in comparison with 2018, due to an increase of the number of brands they work with of around 60%, since the previous year. The startup also wants to grow their team to 85 people by the end of the year, as Luís Roque puts it: “we are a country with great startups and talent”.