A few years ago, transportation of goods, within the city or outside, was more challenging, as they were a few reliable transporters, who could provide “service delivery guarantee under the right price and overall meet the customer expectation.”
Subhasish Das witnessed a similar unsatisfactory experienced faced by his friend, who had to move goods within the city; when he tried to get quotes from the market, he was surprised to get rates with huge variance and with no service delivery guarantee.
Das discussed the gap in the transportation industry with his other friend Saswat Sahu and it instantly struck them to launch a tech-enabled platform which would unite the fragmented space and address all the challenges.
In May 2015, Das and Sahu launched Trukky. It is an app based online transport booking platform that connects users to hire a truck with a network of thousands truck drivers for quick and prompt goods delivery option. The startup is registered in Ahmedabad and operational in Gurgaon.
“Trucking has various challenges throughout. A very low tech usage by drivers, trust issue in the value stream, pricing and broker domination are some the key issues. And we try to address all the challenges through our platform,” said Das, Co-founder and CEO, Trukky.
He explained that besides, majority of the issues are behavioral and to drive adoption they had to drive various campaigns with incentives either by rewarding or driving more business. It is an ongoing process and needs dedicated team effort to achieve long term goals.
How does it work?
The company follows an aggregator model where customers can interact with the platform conveniently and check out prices instantly for different locations both for full truck load and part load; and based on availability can confirm the booking instantly at system prices.
The vehicle gets live on tracking where customers can track the vehicle and gets live support through chat incase of any modification and assistance. The docs are generated instantly online for compliance and permits.
Trukky also differentiates itself as instant booking platform unlike marketplaces where you can list your load to get quotes from truckers.
“We are not a marketplace model but an aggregator and online goods and transportation company where we provide instant pricing to our customers,” clarified Das.
Business metrics
The company started out the business with an initial investment of around Rs 12 lakh, which it invested in technology and operational setups.
Trukky runs a complete bootstrapped business. It claims to clock a monthly revenue of Rs 60 lakh and is growing at 35 per cent month-on-month. Its clients are majorly SMEs and MSMEs who hire transport service on spot basis.
“We booked over 300 orders per month at an average price of Rs 15,000 per transaction. Our 70 per cent of the business is driven by repeat customers majorly because of transparent pricing and customer support,” said Das.
There are over 4000 vehicles registered on the platform, provided by around 1000 fleet owners.
Expansion plans
“We have been focusing more on the product and aims to make it highly scalable along with a good Y-o-Y growth. Now, our focus would be aggressively into customer acquisition and PAN India expansion in the period of next 18 months,” said Das.
The company has plans to cover all major and minor industrial zones across India by the last quarter of 2018; and move above 50000 tons of cargo every month with 100 per cent mobile on mobile operations.
Competitive market
During 2015, there were over 100-plus companies that had suddenly come up in the space, buoyed by the funding rush of that year along with success of the aggregator model in the taxi space.
However, transportation is an extremely challenging and complex industry where it is difficult for a new entrant to make inroads. Almost majority of these companies have now shut shop, or are burning loads of cash if they were lucky to get funded in the mad funding rush of 2015.
TruckOla, TruckSuvidha, TruckMandi, Blackbuck and Rivigo, among several others are the other platforms which are offering solutions in the goods and transportation space.
“The industry is highly fragmented and brokers have a firm grip in the market but eventually it’s the demand that drives the business. And with GST implementation, the startup is staring at a highly reformed industry going forward and in favor of the organized players with the right approach and model,” said Das.
