SmartShift was conceptualised in early 2015 and was launched in Mumbai on October 21, 2015 by Kausalya Nandakumar.
The company is the first digital mobility startup incubated by the US $16.9 billion Mahindra Group.
They are essentially a technology enabled marketplace for intra-city logistics that enables cargo owners to find the right transporters based on the shipment size, weight, and other requirements.
The service can also be accessed through the Android mobile application, website and dedicated call centre.
SmartShift is operational in two cities (Mumbai & Hyderabad), with close to a thousand transporter partners enrolled on the platform; successfully simplifying intra city logistics for hundreds of cargo owners on a daily basis, and all this with a lean team size of twenty odd employees.
About The Founder
Kausalya NandakumarKausalya Nandakumar is the CEO of SmartShift, the first intrapreneurship venture seeded by the Mahindra group. She was identified as a high-pot early in her career and at 36, is the youngest CEO of a Mahindra company.
With an MBA in marketing from Narsee Monjee, Kausalya joined the Mahindra group under the prestigious Young Leaders program that grooms talent early-on for management positions. In her 10 years with the Mahindra group, she has worked across sectors, functions and geographies, giving her the holistic view of the organization. Her excellent track record as the head of corporate sales for North, her brand stint with the highly successful XUV500 and her instrumental role in deploying strategic imperatives across the various business verticals, got her noticed by the senior leadership and put her on the fasttrack to success.
In her last role with Automotive Strategy at Mahindra, while debating the “next big idea for commercial vehicle industry”, Kausalya put forward the idea of a technology-based aggregator in this space. This followed nearly six months of rigorous efforts towards meeting the customers, granular detailing of each aspect, and designing the offering as envisaged. Once the idea was evangelized by none other than Mr. Anand Mahindra himself, SmartShift was born and Kausalya was appointed the CEO of this intrapreneurship venture.
Chitrakshi Suneja Interacts With Kausalya Nandakumar, Founder, SmartShift And Spoke To Her
DescriptionOur focus customer base is the rapidly burgeoning, close to 50 million plus Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India. With its promise of ‘Business Ko Lift Karo’, SmartShift is building a strong culture of customer centricity that aims to free cargo owners from the daily hassles of logistics, enabling them to focus solely on growing their business. The platform with its 3-min load booking algorithms, price transparency, curated transporters and live tracking of vehicles, has already garnered hundreds of loyal customers who perceive high economical and emotional value in being connected with the platform.
The lynchpin to our success has been an unparalleled understanding of the transporter’s mindset. The concept is designed to celebrate the “Entrepreneurial” spirit of the transporters and give them the autonomy that they desire. On SmartShift, they decide their working hours, the right price for the cargo movement and may also decline the job if it does not suit their current conditions. The resultant positive word-of-mouth, coupled with the strong technological focus to create a ubiquitous platform that caters to all phone types (Smart and plain voice enabled/feature) has helped make significant inroads in acquiring and retaining transporter partners on board.
Idea GenerationDuring her tenure as DGM of Strategy for Automotive Business (Mahindra), Kausalya along with a small band of fellow entrepreneurs came together to work on understanding the ecosystem of small commercial vehicles and SME’s who use these vehicles for their cargo transport.
The team conducted 2000+ hours of insighting and mapping several industry’s supply chain end-to-end, it was fairly obvious that the solution went beyond the supply of vehicles. A suitable solution was in taking ownership of the entire delivery process so that the customer is assured and could solely focus on growing his business. SmartShift was born to make that happen and help businesses grow.
Special FeaturesOur unparalleled understanding of the transporter mindset and the design of entire solution around celebrating his entrepreneurial spirit.
Low entry barriers for transporters enabled through a ubiquitous technology platform that simply cuts across all phone types; smartphones or feature phones.
Our pre-determined price model – While insighting with our customers, we realized that most of them prefer to order from naka (small truck stands) because the prices are predetermined and there is a clear visibility of the service.
SmartShift has developed a set of algorithms that allow for predetermined fair prices and allows for price discovery on the platform through an industry-first reverse auctioning feature.
Differentiation FactorsWhat differentiates SmartShift is that the ecosystem allows reverse bidding by transporters and gives them the freedom to live their “entrepreneurial” spirit. It is a price discovery platform where the cargo owner opens the bid for his job and we get him counterbids from large pools of transporters who are registered with us. Like mentioned before, it brings the naka to your smartphone.
Also, the biggest advantage that we have had is that we were incubated within the Mahindra ecosystem. The Mahindra group has provided valuable mentoring that a new business requires. But more importantly, it has also given us access to the decades of accumulated experience of the Commercial vehicle industry, that has helped us do things “customer right” since day one.
Challenges FacedWhen one starts a new venture, convincing the incumbent ecosystem is the biggest challenge. We had the same challenges that any new startup has – bringing about behaviour change and tech adoption, creating brand stickiness and loyalty among customers, generating maximum impact through minimal spends and the likes. We are at a stage, where we all come to work every day looking for new challenges to conquer.
Funding And MonetizationWe received our seed round from the Mahindra Group. The fund will see us through till we go for Series A.
We charge commission from drivers for each successful transaction.
Traction DetailsWe have received positive response in both Mumbai & Hyderabad on the product and its features. Our traction has been in line with our growth plan. Within 9 months of operation, we have seen over 1500 customers using our platform and registration of more than 1000 transporters. Our daily app downloads are on a rise, and we have been successfully able to save for each of our customers, on an average, 25% of his daily spend on logistics. The going is good, and we aim to be the largest player in the intra-city transport across all cities.
Market Size And OpportunityThe sheer size of logistics industry is quite astronomical. It is pegged at $130 bn and we estimate that around 35% to 40% (~$50 bn) will largely be in the intra city space. On a daily basis, more than 50 million SMEs spend approximately 30% of their time find the right cargo transporter. And With ~18 lakh small commercial vehicles completing millions of transactions daily, the opportunity for a marketplace like SmartShift is enormous.
BW Reporters
This is Chitrakshi Suneja currently pursuing graduation and diploma in journalism and mass communication. She is crazy about Writing stuff on Startups, Entrepreneurs and reading as well.
