Ridelink wants to turn fragmented supply-chain and trade-finance pain into a single, data-driven platform. This idea combines logistics, credit, and predictive AI in one system, which is vital because companies trading across Africa and Asia often juggle multiple intermediaries, struggle with cash-flow gaps and face price opacity.
Ridelink, founded in 2017, says it removes that friction by offering a unified workflow. That level of integration could shift the dynamics for importers and exporters operating across frontier trade corridors.
How Ridelink works
A shipper posts a request on Ridelink’s web platform. That triggers the firm’s AI engine, Adrian AI, to generate quotes by tapping a network of vetted carriers. Adrian handles documentation, customs clearance, and coordinates transport, providing live tracking until delivery.
Because Ridelink captures operational data like what is shipped, by whom, from where, and whether it arrives on time, it builds an operational profile for businesses. That profile doubles as a credit file. For companies overlooked by traditional banks, this becomes a tool to assess credit.
That’s where Boo$T comes in. Instead of requiring upfront working capital, Ridelink offers embedded financing for stock purchases, freight, customs costs and even taxes. The same data that drives logistics powers credit decisions. The result is a streamlined flow from purchase order to payment and delivery, all under Ridelink’s umbrella.
A three-pronged solution
Ridelink targets three persistent issues in cross-border trade. The first one is fragmentation. In this case, a single container or consignment often spans freight forwarders, customs brokers, warehouses, and local transporters. Importers end up coordinating every leg, often manually, sometimes at odd hours, chasing updates on messaging apps. This fragmentation slows trade and creates chaos for small businesses without big supply-chain teams.
Secondly, there is a cash-flow mismatch in which suppliers want payment upfront, but buyers may pay only 60 to 90 days after delivery. For many African SMEs that cash-flow gap can kill a trade deal. Traditional banks rarely help because they lack visibility into the actual transaction.
Lastly, there is opacity that results in varying prices depending on who you know, what volume you ship, and which corridor you use. Smaller businesses often end up paying much more.
Ridelink claims to address all three by coordinating end-to-end logistics. It offers embedded credit and provides transparent, data-based pricing.
Still, some problems have not been fully addressed. Once goods move into overland transport inside Africa, end-to-end visibility becomes patchy. And trade finance on the scale African SMEs need remains under-supplied. Ridelink is starting to chip away at both, but Daniel Mukisa, the startup’s founder, admits the gap is enormous.
“End-to-end visibility across borders remains patchy—especially once goods hit land transport in Africa. And trade finance at the scale African SMEs need is still massively undersupplied. We’re chipping away at both, but the gap is enormous,” Mukisa said.
Company, team, and structure
Though Ridelink began in Kampala, its headquarters now sits in San Francisco. The team spans roughly 14 people, a lean crew operating across key trade corridors globally.
Operations are split across regions. The East African shop (Kampala and Nairobi) handles operations, carrier coordination, and customer success. Teams in India and China manage supplier relationships and carrier sourcing at origin. Dubai manages shipments through the UAE and the routes connecting Asia and Africa. San Francisco focuses on strategy, fundraising and major customer deals.
The company is structured around three core verticals, including product and engineering (building Adrian and the platform), operations and customer success (keeping shipments moving), and commercial and partnerships (corridor expansion and financing partnerships).
Carrier network, vetting, and reliability
Ridelink built a network of more than 25,000 transporters. But onboarding doesn’t rely on volume alone. It’s a two-stage vetting process: documentation checks (vehicle registration, insurance, operating licenses, identity verification) followed by performance monitoring.
Every shipment feeds into a carrier’s reliability score like on-time delivery, damage rate, documentation accuracy, and responsiveness. Carriers who underperform see fewer assignments. Top carriers get priority access to high-volume or premium shipments.
That performance-driven matching gives Ridelink a dependable core fleet. The top 200 carriers handle most volume while the rest provide geographic reach and surge capacity.
Ridelink often holds funds in escrow until delivery confirmation to align incentives. That ensures carriers deliver before funds are released.
What Adrian AI brings
Adrian AI performs key tasks, including real-time quoting, smart matching and predictive pricing. When a shipper submits a request, Adrian runs historical pricing data, cargo type, route, weight, urgency and current carrier availability to generate a quote.
The system picks based on prior performance on similar routes, specialization (cold-chain, hazmat, oversized cargo) and current capacity. That reduces delay risks and mismatches.
On established corridors, especially air freight from India to East Africa and road transport within East Africa, Adrian’s quoted cost falls within 5% of the final invoiced cost in over 85% of cases. On newer corridors, accuracy is lower, and Ridelink surfaces that transparency to its clients.
Adrian also forecasts rate trends for repeat corridors and incorporates seasonal demand, fuel cost fluctuations and capacity supply to help shippers decide when to move cargo.
The embedded financing product, Boo$T, takes a different path from traditional credit. Instead of collateral or bank statements, Ridelink uses operational data as the credit file. Shipment history, payment behaviour, supplier relationships and delivery performance paint a reliable credit picture.
Financing is tied to specific transactions, and repayment is linked to customer receivables. If a shipment fails, Ridelink knows immediately and can act to manage risk. The firm works with lending partners, lending firms supply the capital, Ridelink provides underwriting and performance visibility.
So far, that means short-term loans of 30–90 days, full shipment-level financing, and goods-in-transit insurance. Ridelink claims there are no defaults to date.
That matters for SMEs who lack bank credentials but regularly trade across borders. The option to get credit in hours rather than weeks, with no collateral, could unlock many trade deals that would otherwise stall.
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Business model, margins and growth levers
Ridelink generates revenue primarily through transaction fees on freight; it takes a cut on every booking. For freight-only customers, margins remain thin because logistics is inherently volume-driven.
But when finance gets layered in through Boo$T, revenue per customer jumps by two to three times. Combined with financing fees, the blended margin improves significantly.
Embedding finance also boosts customer stickiness. When shippers rely on Ridelink not just for transport, but for working capital, they are more likely to stay. Cash flow cycles, shipment scheduling and financing are all integrated into a single system.
Finally, the more Ridelink handles — logistics, data, capital — the deeper its visibility into risk and demand. That feedback loop improves underwriting, matching, pricing and reliability. The combination of freight and finance gives Ridelink a business structure resembling a physical-goods version of a payments rails company.
What Ridelink plans to do with its recent funding
Ridelink recently closed a $1.1 million pre-seed round. The money will drive key priorities, including wider adoption of its embedded finance product and deepening automation.
Between now and the next funding round, expect announcements of strategic corridor partnerships, expanded financing capacity, new enterprise customers, possibly in pharma, automotive or industrial goods, and public metrics on AI-driven efficiency gains.
What would it take for Ridelink to scale the engine?
To speed up its marketplace engine, Ridelink has identified three levers. First, carrier density on key routes implies that there are more vetted carriers with proven track records, especially on newer corridors. More carriers equals better coverage, competitive pricing and faster matches.
Second is demand aggregation. Concentrating volume on a few key corridors allows Ridelink to negotiate better rates, attract carriers and build a self-reinforcing network effect. The firm says it will resist the temptation to spread across too many corridors too soon.
Third, the startup is looking into deeper automation. The less manual work needed, the fewer friction points. Adrian must handle documentation, customs pre-clearance and exception routing automatically. That frees the team to focus on relationships, complex flows and expansion.
“Liquidity in a marketplace means a shipper posts a request and gets multiple competitive options instantly. In India to East Africa, we’re there. On newer corridors, we need more carrier partners with proven performance,” Mukisa said.
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