I started thinking about the problems in logistics space during my professional career as a plant manager in Barbil, Odisha. Logistics in India is a very rough and un-organized industry and yet like finance, logistics is essential to every business. Given the size of the market and the opportunity in hand we started TruckHall, a Kolkata based start-up, operating in the road transportation & Logistics industry,last year. TruckHall at its core is a technology company, in the business of improving the efficiency of any truckload plying on Indian roads, with the help of smart and cutting edge technology. In a short span we have grown to a team size of 40 and are growing at a rate of 30% month on month.
We help large/medium companies manage their logistics end-to-end.
Currently, India spends more than 13% of its GDP in logistic industry. This is due to the fragmented nature of vehicle ownership in India. There are at-least 5 entities involved in every transaction which in turn makes the flow of information around the transaction very inefficient.
TruckHall solves this problem by providing a platform which brings key entities (like vehicle suppliers, customers and brokers ) on a single platform and reduces the inefficiencies that arises due to lack of coordination.
There are many challenges that we face. Firstly, the procurement needs to be done at a competitive price from a reliable vendor. We use big store of data to help companies judge which vendor is best for the particular transaction based on various parameters like route, vehicle and goods transported.
The second problem is around the flow of information, right from notifying potential vendors about a lead to tracking the consignment to processing the payment. Through our mobile and web application we have made sure that all parties involved have the right information at all times and are notified when they need to feed in data.
People still don’t look at logistics industry with the respect it deserves so pulling out good people from other industry to join the team becomes challenging.
Logistics impacts every industry. By helping companies save on logistics cost, we are helping reduce the cost of everyday essentials. Faster flow of information ensures that goods carriers’ vehicles are always moving and thus helps the economy run more efficiently.
There are no other services available in this market which is solving the problem at a similar scale like us. The number of vendors that we have been able to attract is what makes our service unique.
Our aim is to make spot procurement for logistics a reality in India. Irrespective of what one wants to move, what is the mode of transport, one should be able to find a reliable vendor the same day and transact without any anxiety.