VesselMan Adds New Investors

VesselMan continues to expand its international reach. Grieg, Møkster Investment, and Skagerak Maturo have announced they are investing in VesselMan, backing up their belief that the company will successfully be the leader in the digitalization of the shipping industry.

Since 2016, VesselMan has secured agreements with several leading shipping companies, including Wilhelmsen Ship Management, Transpetrol TP, Höegh LNG, PGS, Møkster Investment, Thomas W. Grieg and Skagerak Maturo. The latter companies recently joining the VesselMan team in August 2019.

“No other maritime sector company has such a unique cloud-based platform as that developed by VesselMan,” said Skagerak’s André Berg Edvardsen.
 
Simplifies and cuts costs

VesselMan is a cloud-based management tool designed specifically for ship maintenance and technical projects. Shipowners globally conduct around 25,000 technical projects annually, with a combined price tag of around $75 billion.

“Before VesselMan, services aimed at managing the technical, inspection, and managerial departments were managed from disparate platforms. This led to many different methods of managing tasks that should have been integrated and looked at holistically,” says entrepreneur Stig Linna. He says that 90 percent of their potential clients have challenges with ensuring good project planning and work collaboration. In order to complete the thousands of technical tasks that occur in connection with ship maintenance they need a holistic platform to manage the process. 

“That's exactly why I wanted to standardize and digitalize the various technical projects through a cloud-based solution. VesselMan’s aim is to simplify, organize, and cut costs across the entire fleet” says Linna.
 
Serial entrepreneurs Stig Linna and Glenn Edvardsen

Linna has more than 35 years of experience in business and software development. In November 2017, Glenn Edvardsen stepped in as CEO, and together they have pushed the VesselMan solution into the shipping sector. After a short time, they had several of the world's leading players on their customer list.

“Stig Linna is very experienced and has succeeded before. The combination of Stig's background with IT and software development, and Glenn's experience in the shipping industry, makes the breadth of the company's expertise unique,” said Edvardsen. Additionally, VesselMan has received very valuable support and assistance from Innovation Norway and Klosser Innovation.
 
Going Global

As of today, VesselMan has seven employees and plans to double that number within the next year. Growth will continue globally as the company has already seen potential customers from every continent reaching out to learn more.

The company has entered into agreements with Clearwater Shipping Group in the Netherlands, Meratus in Indonesia, KC Maritime in Hong Kong, and Intership Navigation in Cyprus.

“We have an office in Singapore, and in 2019 we established agents in Athens and Dubai to get closer to potential customers and to lay the foundation for escalating growth,” says Edvardsen.

“The next step is to position VesselMan so that technical management can handle intelligent ships by utilizing data to make decisions and perform tasks in an automated way.” Investor André Berg Edvardsen agrees: “Together, we will create a product that will make the everyday life of the technical department less stressful and more manageable.”