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With the convenience factor like 3-minute load booking, price transparency and live tracking of vehicles, the web based fleet aggregator model has gained thousands of customers
Q How are your services redefining logistics industry in general and surface transport in particular? How technology and innovation of business model is helping to bring efficiency in logistics industry?
Launched in October 2015, SmartShift is the first digital mobility start-up seeded within the $17.8 billion Mahindra Group. It is a technology-enabled marketplace for intra-city logistics that enables cargo owners to find suitable transporters. Users can find each other, negotiate and close the deal through a mobile application, website or a dedicated call center. SmartShift’s value proposition for its customers are delivering transporters the control on pricing in an innovative way; eliminating entry barriers; intelligent adaptation of the existing ecosystem to deliver zero NPA payment system; and unique pricing model to drive adoption and profitability. Currently, the service is operational in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, with more than three thousand drivers enrolled on the platform, and it benefits around two hundred cargo owners on a daily basis.
Q How will technology disrupt the trucking sector in the coming years?
The advent of Industry 4.0 and the IoT shall transform the logistics industry. Location and tracking itself, which is the crux of the transportation industry, shall undergo major changes. With the advent of digital maps, we have dynamic maps which show us traffic in real time. We have slowly started moving into the location intelligence space, an area that is currently dominated by ride sharing apps, google now, etc. The next wave shall be predictive where machine learning techniques will take the billions of connected devices that are present in the ecosystem and location intelligence to offer predictive and assistive insights.
Q What is the change taking place in the trucking industry after the advent of IT driven service providers like you?
For SmartShift, the target audience is the rapidly growing close to 50 million SMEs in India, with frequent requirements of adhoc cargo transportation (local furniture shops, fruits & vegetable and distributors etc). We are working towards building a strong customer centric culture that aims to help SMEs to tackle logistics related hassles, and focus solely on growing their business. The platform, with its 3-minute load booking algorithms, price transparency, curated transporters and live tracking of vehicles, has gained thousands of customers.
The platform allows transporters to decide their working hours, fix tariff for the cargo movement and also decline the job.
Q What makes these logistics technology solution providers an interesting proposition to investors?
Knowledge, information and finally, data is the new oil. The power of digital aggregators in logistics is not restricted to merely digitizing this sector but also collecting invaluable information that will impact multiple stakeholders across various ecosystems. For instance, we are currently sitting on a goldmine of SME database which any NBFC would be happy to leverage. Our vast transporter database is extremely attractive for all major oil companies. Thus, our data is what makes us powerful and invaluable for investors.
Q How is the market growth in this sector?
Technology-enabled companies are the future of the logistics industry. The sheer number of player competing in this space alone is proof of how lucrative it is. Consolidation may happen in the future but there is no doubt that the need for an organized player to bring efficiencies to this unorganized industry is real. With great digital penetration, this sector will continue to evolve and improve.
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?
Our primary challenge is of digital education and access to data. Logistics is an industry that is still relatively new to the digital wave and when data becomes accessible, the transformation to efficient operations will be swifter. Our other big struggle is in ensuring that both the transporter and the customer who is transporting his goods consistently get value, and it could be a major reason for the failure of many other start-ups in this space.
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