Truckola is a technology driven transportation company providing services for full-truckloads cargo on long distance inter-state routes.
Truckola was founded by a team of logistics professionals with engineering degrees from Stanford, Duke & IIT-Delhi. They are disrupting the industry by making cargo transportation cost optimal, convenient and stress free for everybody from drivers to cargo owners. They have recently raised an angel round of funding on LetsVenture led by Abhishek Agarwal, of Fortune Interfinance Ltd (FIFL).
Other key investors in the round include, the Crown Prince of Ras Al Khaimah via his company Al Hamra Group; Krishnakumar Natarajan, co-Founder & Executive Chairman of NSE listed Mindtree Ltd.; Sarath Sura, Chairman of GreyCampus and Co-founder of Sierra Atlantic; Shanti Mohan, founder of LetsVenture; Sarthak & Nihit Agarwal of Shubhalakshmi Polyesters; and Suramya Gupta, Fund Manager at a leading Japanese VC Firm, apart from several other highly connected leaders of the industry.
The funds invested will be utilised primarily for scaling up the technology and for strengthening the service delivery capability of the company.
“The transportation industry is currently at the cusp of a massive tech revolution.”
“Transportation in India is expected to be a $300 billion industry by 2020. It has traditionally been a profitable but inefficient and unscalable business because of the lack of technology adoption in the sector. We are using technology in a revolutionary way to optimise the transport eco system and make the business model operationally scalable. We do this primarily by creating visibility in the value chain for better supply-demand alignment, and by reducing the idling time of vehicles.
We have already seen tech disruption in transportation in the US and in Europe that have created billion dollar exits for companies. Given the size of the problem, it is inevitable that such a disruption/consolidation will happen in India as well, and our goal is to affect that disruption from the front in the quickest manner possible” says, Raghav Himatsingka, co-founder of Truckola.
The Truckola team says that since tech logistics is a fledgling industry, there is enough room for everybody right now, but they do recognise other players who are also attempting to bring technology into transportation.
“We feel that our biggest competitor at this stage, is the traditional mindset of people in the industry. We hope people will welcome the upcoming technology revolution in the transportation sector and embrace it for the benefit of everybody in the ecosystem.”
What differentiates Truckola from the rest?The founders say, “Without commenting on anybody else’s strategies, we like to differentiate from our competition on 3 distinct fronts (a) stronger value proposition for all players in the value chain, (b) superior execution to deliver on our value proposition, and (c) clearly defined vision and roadmap to achieve our goals for the future.”
Truckola’s Founders:■ Raghav Himatsingka, co-Founder of Truckola, has 7 years of experience handling his family business of transportation where he started and scaled businesses from 0 to Rs. 120 crores annual revenues in 3 years’ time. Raghav specialises in building and managing large teams across multiple geographies and he has experience operating in 19 out of 29 states in India. He deeply understands the pain points of the transportation industry and has closely seen the ups, the downs and the challenges of rapidly scaling up a company from concept to contracts, billing to cash collections and compliances. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Georgia Tech.
■ Co-founder Keshav Himatsingka is an engineer by passion and by education. He is excited about the opportunity to use technology to radically impact the lives of the millions of people associated with the transport industry. Previously he founded and ran a chain of 3 restaurants but moved on from the venture as he felt he was not creating enough life-changing value for his customers. Keshav has studied Computer Science & Mechanical Engineering at Duke University.
■ Vipul Garg, the third co-founder of Truckola is a Computer Science & Chemical Engineer from IIT-Delhi. While in college he founded a startup that delivered 3 client projects that earned him more than twice the average annual salary of an engineer. He has the unique ability to attract and mentor the smartest engineers and at Truckola he’s excited about using his skills to fundamentally disrupt the half-a-century old, US$300 billion transport industry.
