The Indian logistics sector is pegged at a $150 Billion Opportunity and is expected to touch $307 Billion by 2020. In India, Road Freight constitutes around 63% of the total freight movement in the country, with 2.2 million representing heavy duty trucks and 600K for light duty trucks. As a result the intra-city logistics space is valued at $ 9 Billion. This is a huge market opportunity that is waiting to be tapped.
Today Shippr, an intra-city pickup and delivery company, has grown to become a key player in the Indian logistics sector. The company was conceived by Rohit Fernandes in late 2014 in an effort to organize and build a scalable model for intra-city pickups and deliveries.
Rohit, who is an engineer armed with a Masters Degree in Supply Chain Management and Logistics, was ably poised to develop a robust business plan. He had previously worked for a UK based Food Supply Chain company managing an inventory budget of £20 million per annum. Hailing from a family of Logisticians and Transport providers, he understood the industry sector well and firmly believed in the opportunity and its potential. In early 2015, Rohit was in the market scouting for a seed round when he got 3 different offers. He finally decided to go with Venture Factory because of the factory modelled support system that came with the seed fund.
Shippr ’s introduction to the Venture Factory Platform:
Coincidentally, Anup, a senior member of the Venture Factory (VF) team, was independently interested in this space and had been exploring various models for venture creation. Venture Factory has a venture building model that is unique to India. VF assists early stage startups in the complete lifecycle from developing proof of concept, to drawing business plans, to funding and other assistance to enable these startups to scale seamlessly into fast growth companies.
When the two met, they immediately knew that they had a winning partnership on their hands. Rohit and Anup developed a good working chemistry and decided to build the company together. While the core Shippr team was focused on demonstrating the viability of the business and arriving at a Product-Market fit, VF provided a Marketing expert to help them create a suitable Marketing strategy. This allowed the Shippr team to focus on building their business while the larger Venture Factory team provided umbrella cover in addressing other requisites such as Human Resources, Accounting, Office Space, etc.
Rohit and his team have from there on successfully built Shippr into a robust and fast growing business. A few of the major milestones that the team has achieved are:
- One of India’s Biggest intra-city delivery networks
- Present in 4 cities – Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai
- Works with leading E-Commerce players and enablers, 3PL Logistics players etc.
- One of the only profitable companies in this segment
Shippr provides guaranteed employment to drivers with several other benefits, which in turn helps the drivers who are often hailed from economically-disadvantaged families to manage their finances properly and to pay their EMIs on time.
The company has also introduced several value adds in the sector towards automating and monitoring the entire process of loading and delivery, customer engagement, monitoring the vehicles, billing and collection, etc. The results are evident by the ever-growing list of Shippr’s customers.
A major innovation introduced by Shippr is in the ecommerce segment. Here, they work with some of the largest ecommerce players in the country in solving their biggest challenge- which is a mix of capacity utilization and route optimization. With their custom Technology-enabled Operations solution, the last mile delivery cost for customers have been reduced by 25-30%. In addition to better utilization and efficiency of vehicles, the technology also brings in a high level of transparency- thereby minimizing pilferage costs.
In Rohit’s words, “The icing on the cake for our customers is that we don’t just provide them with the technology support, but take complete charge of their physical operations as well.”
This post is written by Shippr. Read more Startup Stories.
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