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In future information has a greater role to play, and Sudhakar Vintha, CEO, ReturnTrucks believes data science is the key focus area to empower customers as IOT devices will provide a wealth of data related to truck tracking, truck health monitoring, fuel consumption, speed monitoring etc useful to vehicle manufacturing companies, fuel companies, insurance companies and others
Q Please provide a brief outline about your service offerings and how is it redefining logistics industry in general and surface transport industry in particular in-terms cost and time efficiency? How technology and innovation of business model is helping to bring efficiency in logistics industry? What are the benefits to your customer?
ReturnTrucks vision is to build a logistic eco-system in India to improve truck efficiency, bring visibility and assurance to the shipment through innovative logistic solutions that cater to the small and medium transporters. Our online platform connects truck and load owners for an effective, timely and economic engagement. Our platform helps the load owners post their requirements and truck owners post their availability for free of cost. ReturnTrucks also works as a single point of contact between load owners, truck operators and agents there by reducing lot of gaps, delays and costs on communication. Our team has built multiple solutions on ReturnTrucks platform to support our vision of building logistics ecosystem.
Q In the coming year what role technology is going to playing as far as trucking and other surface transport sector is concerned?
In the coming year technology is going to change the traditional nature of transport business. There are lot of inefficiencies in this sector today, right from the way a truck is sourced to final settlement of bills which result in wastage of time and money for all the stakeholders involved. Truckers will be more reliant on tech market places like Return Trucks for their business in the coming year and customers will be reaching out to larger number of service providers through our platform to get the best rate for their requirement. Tech adoption will further speed up invoicing and payment processes reducing financial burden for truckers. We will see a new breed of tech transporters replacing the current setup and bigger industry players will also adopt technology.
Q Information and technology, data, and real time mapping and analysis has changed people movement in the country. Shall we expect a similar evolution to take place in the surface transport sector?
Definitely. The power of data has not been used to its full potential in freight transport sector today. Most of the decisions are experience or gut based. B2B freight sector being more cost conscious with thin margins, data analysis and accurate forecasting is required to identify seasonal changes and for price prediction. Being able to identify pricing fluctuations and quote accurately is the key to success in the business. Further IOT devices will provide a wealth of data related to truck tracking, truck health monitoring, fuel consumption, speed monitoring etc useful to vehicle manufacturing companies, fuel companies, insurance companies and others. Data science is the key focus area for Return Trucks to empower our customers.
Q What is your observation about the change that is taking place in the trucking industry after the advent of information & technology driven service providers like yours? How the trucking industry which was so far unorganized and unstructured is transforming to provide seamless first mile and last mile connectivity?
There is lot of opaqueness in this industry which prevents customers and truckers from realizing actual supply demand available in any market. This also prevents new entrants into this business. With the support of tech players, this is now changing. Before, a customer would reach out to only a few truckers everyday for their requirement, but now they are able to reach out to large number of service providers and receive competitive price. More people are now able to buy trucks and get into this business due to our market place. Only tech adoption can bring structure to this industry and organize smaller players. The experience for the customers is now seamless as they can track status of any order from booking to payment online, check and give reviews for service providers and resolve issues with click of a button.
Q Road transport sector is already giving stiff competition to rail, hence will it further disrupt other modes of transport? How the face of the trucking industry will be in future? Moreover, What is your vision for the company? Road transport will be organized for better utilization over the years and will be connected well with various stake holders in the eco-system. It will continue to dominate the overall transport sector in the future. ReturnTrucks vision is to build a logistic eco-system in India to improve truck efficiency, bring visibility and assurance to the shipment through innovative logistic solutions that cater to the small and medium transporters. In our effort to build an eco-system, we partnered with different industry players related to logistics – be it insurance players, manufacturing organizations, e-commerce and highway stoppe players.
Q In recent times lot of interest has been shown by investors for technology companies in the logistics space. What makes these logistics technology solution providers an interesting proposition to investors?
The size of the opportunity. It is touted to be a $300 B industry by 2020 and is yet largely unorganized. Also note that the largest players in this industry hold less than 2 per cent market share. 80 per cent of the service providers are small players with a low average asset utilization. So there is lot of scope for tech based startups to disrupt the market by aggregating the suppliers and improving their asset utilization. Investors see a high RoI in this sector since tech based market places can scale up rapidly in this sector and they are now more confident than before due to availability of smartphones and internet at very affordable rates for truck providers and drivers.
Q How is the market growth for technology enabled logistics companies? What kind of investment you see surface transport industry is making on technology?
Tech enabled companies are able to grow rapidly by automating manual intensive processes and reduce payment cycles. Many of the large players have been taken by surprise with growth of the new age startups in this space and we see a willingness in them to now invest in technology. Further the space is too large for just few players to dominate, there is enough scope for multiple models to co exist and flourish. With efforts from government to encourage online transactions and GST implementation, investors feel optimistic and hence we will see more money flowing into this space from existing and new players alike.
Q What is the major challenge before the companies like yours? Why a number of tech-driven logistics start-ups have not been able to sustain? Changing the mindset of the traditional players to learn and adopt technology is a major challenge in this space. Tech adoption in this sector needs persistent long term efforts and just having platform in place does not ensure traction and business. Some of the startups that could not sustain, failed at the implementation stage. Till market achieves a significant tech adoption, online market has to co exist with the offline market and lot of startups have not been able to handle uncertainty arising in such scenario. Having said that, logistics is also like any other business, lot of factors external and internal have contributed to success or failure of the startups in this space.
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