Maritime expertise

The maritime eco-system is complex, global in nature and includes many different stakeholders. The movement of cargo via vessels is based on very specialised terminology, rules and regulations and long-standing market practices. Therefore, without experience and deep domain knowledge we believe it is very hard to provide value, judgement or actionable recommendations.

That is why our platform was built from the start by our Founders, Ami Daniel and Matan Peled, who had significant marine experience and introduced significant expertise across the shipping, trading, energy and logistics industries. Both Founders are ex-Israeli navy officers, and many of the senior leadership team, as well as analysts and consultants, have hands-on shipping or naval expertise, including the Chief Data Scientist. The experience of this specialised team in the shipping and commodity trading sectors, helps accelerate the product development roadmap and time to market.

This expertise is combined with world-class data science in order to source the appropriate data sources, benchmark them, clean the data and provide recommendations and insights for customers which we believe are relevant and value-added to their day-to-day decisions.

Cutting edge AI technology

Windward’s technology platform is underpinned by AI technology, with over 15 AI models and algorithms, utilising deep learning, machine learning, pattern matching and anomaly detection, and is supported by a range of models, protected by a registered US patent. By fusing AI, data science and maritime expertise, we have built what we believe to be an all-in-one AI platform for maritime insights in the market. Windward’s AI decision support platform to augment and manage maritime domain awareness and risks is helping governments and businesses to track, manage, comply and protect maritime assets and operations through increased awareness and Business Intelligence (“BI”) insights. These valuable insights are enabled by our world-class data capabilities, sourced from 18 different data providers. Between 2017 and 30 June 2021 we have invested approximately US$25 million on research and development (“R&D”) on the technology platform.

Proven data capabilities

We believe that our sourcing and managing of third-party data are key factors to our success. In the last few years, the market has seen an exponential growth in the availability of different data sources. The challenge the market faces as a result of that is how to identify, analyse, combine and make sense out of the multiple forms, structures and types of data.

Windward’s data strategy is based on two complementary principles:

  1. Best of breed – analysing and identifying the most reliable and comprehensive sources
  2. Redundancy – making sure it has overlapping data, to enable cross-verification and assure coverage 

Differentiated data is a core element in building successful AI products. We believe that our historical, analysed and tagged database, dating back to January 2013 serves as a key competitive advantage.

We source data from 18 data providers, including a first dynamic vessel ownership database where it developed a new methodology to identify ownership risk using its proprietary algorithms along with top quality, market-based data sources.

We have built partnerships with various market participants, including a number of shipbrokers in the market, which have ongoing interaction with vessels and owners creating a strong dynamic data sourcing for ownership.

In total, our platform processes more than 100,000,000 data points daily, cleansing and transforming the data of our core patented Predictive Intelligence Platform to deliver actionable business intelligence.

Significant Total Addressable Market

We believe that our technology platform is applicable in at least one aspect for all market participants in the maritime and commodity trading sectors, including banks, commodity traders, insurers, government agencies, and major energy and shipping companies, allowing us to target an estimated total addressable market that we believe is over US$10 billion and has more than 250,000 organisations, highlighting the significant opportunity for Windward.

Strong industry drivers

The transition towards digitalisation and automation is accelerating in the maritime industry. Digital technologies and solutions are being used to increase competitiveness and enhance operational efficiency. Data feeds from sensors and other sources of information can be used for decision making, enhanced monitoring, and verification.

We believe that Windward is at the crossroads of those key drivers, particularly increasing regulation and compliance, real-time visibility on the supply chain and reducing carbon emissions.

With an increasing focus from governmental and inter-governmental agencies on compliance and upcoming regulatory changes, we believe that our AI platform is well positioned to provide important real time information and insights on every commercial vessel at sea. We believe that these insights are critically important against a growing backdrop of deceptive shipping practices such as AIS manipulation, and the need to track, manage, comply and protect maritime assets to help its customers with new regulations. The U.S. and the United Nations maintain a variety of economic sanctions regimes, including economic sanctions against North Korea, embargoes on Cuba, Iran, Syria, and the Crimea Region, and sanctions targeting sectors of the Venezuelan economy that support the current Venezuelan regime, as well as prohibitions on any kind of dealing with, or for the benefit of, individuals, companies, and vessels designated by the U.S. as Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (“SDNs”). U.S. sanctions have broad extra-territorial applications, impacting the activities of foreign persons outside of the U.S. This includes the “Sanctions Advisory for the Maritime Industry, Energy and Metal Secrets, and Related Communities” published on 14 May 2020 by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), which raised the standards expected for sanction compliance for the maritime eco-system, including the detection and monitoring of deceptive shipping practices. OFAC’s direction was followed by the UK’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (“OFSI”) Maritime Guidance issuing its shipping advisory [and] guidelines on 27 July 2020, highlighting new global trends in compliance. In addition to sanction enforcement and regulation, it is clear that the use of technology and data analysis is central to the wider challenge of tackling trade-based money laundering and counter terrorism.

Global trade would be effectively impossible without the shipping industry, which faces a formidable environmental challenge. World leaders and the scientific community have come to the consensus that greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions must drastically reduce in the next 30 years — a task that will not be easy. In fact, according to the latest U.N. climate panel’s report the “Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”, unless immediate, rapid, and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the average global temperature is likely to reach or cross the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold increase within 20 years. The shipping industry, which transports roughly 90 per cent. of global trade, currently produces about 3 per cent. of all greenhouse gas emissions but, according to the third International Maritime Organization (“IMO”) GHG study published in 2014, could represent as much as 10 per cent. of such emissions by 2050. The initial greenhouse gas strategy from the IMO laid out aggressive targets for the shipping industry, aiming to reduce CO2 emissions for transportation sectors by at least 40 per cent. by 2030 on average across international shipping. New EU regulations introduced in 2021, such as “Fit for 55”, are driving global standards given that the majority of commodity trade finance banks involved in maritime trade are based in the EU. Under these regulations, charterers must account for carbon, for all trades, not just those in the EU and there will be a mandatory carbon cap and an emissions trading scheme from January 2023. Additional upcoming regulations and guidelines include Carbon Intensity Indicator (“CII”), Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (“EEXI”), Energy Efficiency Design Index (“EEDI”), Energy Efficiency Operational Indicator (“EEOI”), Sea Cargo Charter, Poseidon Principles and a variety of other regulations. The decarbonisation agenda runs throughout the maritime supply chain from ship owners and charterers who want to improve efficiency and differentiate their offering through to energy companies that must meet targets and consumers that are demanding change and are willing to amend their buying habits to reward supply chains with leading environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) credentials. There is now general acceptance that corporate leaders view robust ESG performance, including a reduction of their carbon footprint, as a necessary condition for conducting business. Companies that operate as part of the maritime supply chain often seek to act ahead of regulation and need the right data, tools, and insights to position their companies to meet or exceed these environmental targets. Since more than 95 per cent. of vessels’ fuel consumptions and carbon emissions are driven by their operations, We believe Windward’s expertise in analysing and building models for vessel’s operational behaviours, as well as its proven data capability, provides an inherent competitive advantage.

Many companies lack visibility of their shipments in transit. We believe that shippers and third-party logistics providers are struggling to provide their customers with real-time location of shipments and when they will receive them. Consumers and businesses continue to push for visibility and transparency in the supply chain, as the current limited visibility results in instability, delays and poor customer service. Global trade relies on predictable efficiency. We believe that this is not currently being fully addressed in the ocean freight market. The desired outcome is for shippers and freight forwarders to have advanced early warning of changes to delivery times and for third party logistics providers to have the ability to provide superior customer service by advising their customers when changes are going to happen. We believe that our new ocean freight visibility solution planned to be launched in 2022 is expected to provide the ability to identify changes before they happen and provide visibility faster than the shipping companies are able or willing to, which is a key competitive differentiator.

Strong financial track record with high levels of recurring revenue

Windward benefits from a strong commercial model with high levels of recurring revenue supporting strong revenue and cash flow visibility. As at 30 September 2021, the Company had an ACV of US$19.7 million* (unaudited), 99 per cent. of the revenue being subscription based. For the period between 31 December 2017 to 30 September 2021, Windward achieved a CAGR in its ACV of approximately 30 per cent (unaudited). During the 2017 – 2020 period, net revenues grew from US$5.9 million in 2017 to US$14.6 million in 2020. Windward’s scalable SaaS model with 79 per cent. gross margins for the year ended 31 December 2020 provides the Company with a clear path towards profitability in the future.

*as at 30 September 2021

Registered patents

The Company benefits from one registered US patent granted in February 2021 aimed at protecting the Company’s intellectual property, specifically its big data analysis of maritime-related data. This registered patent ensures that no other party can copy or otherwise obtain and use its proprietary technology without authorisation, therefore protecting the Company’s proposition against existing and new market entrants. Windward also has three pending national patents filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (“PCT”) application, filed in Israel, Singapore and the United Kingdom to further protect its intellectual property. We believe that due to its hyper-specialisation there is significant room for furthering the registered patent portfolio of Windward.

Strong and growing global customers base

Windward’s solutions are used by over 70 globally spread customers, split between 29 governmental and 43 commercial customers, as at 30 September 2021. We believe that the breadth of our customers highlights the quality of our solutions and the potential for increased sales. This is also illustrated by the growth in new customers, with 32 new customer wins in the nine-month period to 30 September 2021, further highlighting ourtrack record of new customer acquisition and effective go-to-market strategy.

Breadth of solutions

Given the large number of stakeholders in the maritime eco-system, our platform is built to support multiple solutions. The platform layers (data, entities, journeys and patterns) are shared across all solutions, providing the context of behaviours, structures and relationships. Based on this, each solution extracts the relevant indicators to provide vertical-specific insights, recommendations and definitions of risk.

This structure allows Windward to support multiple use-cases from a variety of different maritime markets and verticals. It also allows it to develop new solutions for new markets and allows customisation for each customer as required.

Experienced management team

Windward’s multidisciplinary management team has extensive knowledge and expertise from the worlds of business, maritime, intelligence and data sciences. The management team has grown the Company’s operations across new geographies and verticals while developing its technology solution, and benefits from a mixture of maritime, operations management expertise, technical skills and corporate development experience. The senior management team has experience of working in other multinational organisations in their respective disciplines and remains firmly committed to the future growth of the Company and the market in which it operates.