Seafarers bring the world’s goods to shore yet often struggle to access basic products and services for themselves. The new service brings trusted shopping and onboard delivery directly to them.
Sailor’s Cart is now available through onship, the Maritime Superapp, and can be activated across FrontM-powered crew platforms used by shipping companies and maritime service providers.
SINGAPORE AND LONDON, 16th July 2026: FrontM and Sailor’s Cart have launched an integrated seafarer welfare and commerce service designed to make everyday life at sea more convenient, connected and rewarding.
Seafarers transport the food, fuel, medicines and goods on which the global economy depends. Yet when they need essential products, personal items or trusted local services, access can be difficult, expensive or sometimes impossible.
Short port calls, remote terminals, demanding watch schedules, immigration and security restrictions and limited shore leave can prevent crew members from visiting shops or accessing services ashore. What appears to be a simple inconvenience is part of a wider challenge affecting wellbeing, morale and the long-term attractiveness of a career at sea.
The Seafarers Happiness Index continues to highlight concerns around shore leave, workload, isolation and the balance between professional rewards and personal sacrifice. At the same time, the maritime industry faces an increasing shortage of qualified officers and an urgent need to attract and retain the next generation of seafarers.
Improving everyday life onboard must therefore be seen as more than an employee benefit. It is an important part of the industry’s future workforce strategy.
Bringing services to seafarers
The newly launched service changes the traditional model by bringing trusted products and services to seafarers, rather than expecting them to overcome the operational barriers surrounding a port call.
Sailor’s Cart is now integrated into onship, FrontM’s maritime superapp, allowing seafarers to browse available products, place orders and request supported services before their vessels arrive in Singapore.
Numerous ship management companies and maritime service partners already operate crew applications and digital services on the FrontM platform. These organisations can request Sailor’s Cart to be added to their existing FrontM-powered platforms, giving seafarers seamless access through interfaces they already use and trust.
The service enables crew members to:
● Order everyday essentials and personal products
● Request supported port-based services
● Coordinate purchases with colleagues onboard
● Combine requirements into a consolidated vessel order
● Reduce fragmented delivery costs
● Track fulfilment and receive products directly onboard
By combining individual requests, Sailor’s Cart can act as a group-buy orchestrator for ship staff, helping make vessel deliveries more economical, coordinated and convenient.
Built from lived seafaring experience
Sailor’s Cart was founded by master mariner Capt. Akee Sharma, inspired by his own experience of reaching ports around the world without always being able to step ashore or easily purchase essential goods.
Capt. Akee Sharma, Founder and CEO of Sailor’s Cart, said:
“Seafarers bring the world’s goods to shore, but there has not always been a dependable way to bring those goods back to them.
“We created Sailor’s Cart to offer seafarers greater convenience, transparent pricing and access to trusted products and services. Through FrontM and onship, we can now reach more vessels through a secure and scalable model while keeping the needs of seafarers at the centre of the experience.”
Turning welfare innovation into practical adoption
Maritime has no shortage of valuable welfare services and digital ideas. The challenge is enabling shipping companies and seafarers to discover, assess, trust and adopt them without repeatedly navigating separate applications, integrations, commercial agreements and onboarding processes.
These barriers can significantly increase the time between identifying a need and delivering a working solution onboard. As a result, promising welfare initiatives can remain fragmented, underused or unable to reach meaningful scale.
FrontM’s AI-native, low-code operating platform enabled Sailor’s Cart to be rapidly integrated into onship and made available for distribution across FrontM-powered company platforms.
Venkat Ramakrishnan, Head of Product at FrontM, said:
“Seafarer welfare cannot depend only on isolated campaigns or individual applications. It must become part of the everyday digital infrastructure supporting life at sea.
“Sailor’s Cart demonstrates how FrontM can shorten the journey from a valuable maritime service to practical adoption onboard. Providers can integrate once, while shipping companies can make the service available through platforms their seafarers already know and use.”
A roadmap for easier and more rewarding access
The launch is supported by an ecosystem of administration, supplier onboarding, fulfilment coordination, affiliate management, reporting and partner distribution tools.
The product roadmap will build on this foundation to make shopping easier, more secure and more rewarding for seafarers. Planned capabilities include:
● A closed-loop eWallet for simpler and more secure payments
● Employer-funded credits, rewards and welfare allowances
● The ability for ship managers to recognise and incentivise crew members
● An AI-powered shopping assistant for product discovery and self-service support
● Automated order updates, delivery notifications and tracking
● Enhanced group ordering and vessel-level fulfilment visibility
● Expansion into additional products, services and port locations
The long-term objective is to create a trusted and seamless welfare ecosystem that can serve the global community of nearly two million seafarers.
A call for industry collaboration
FrontM and Sailor’s Cart are inviting shipowners, ship managers, crewing companies, welfare organisations, retailers, port service providers and maritime associations to help expand the initiative.
Maritime companies can make the service available to their seafarers, sponsor welfare products or discounts, introduce trusted suppliers, participate in fulfilment and affiliate programmes, or help expand the model into new ports.
Improving life at sea requires the maritime community to work together. By making useful services easier to discover, integrate and access, the industry can turn seafarer welfare from a good intention into a consistent and meaningful everyday experience.
Source: FrontM
