~Highlights technology interventions needed to bring ease of doing business for both the demand and supply side of the road logistics sector~
National – March 20, 2023: Vahak, India’s most trusted transport community platform, today organised a roundtable to highlight the present state of the road logistics sector and key technological interventions needed to bring ease of doing business.
In 2019, IITians Karan Shaha and Vikas Chandrawat co-founded Vahak with an intent to digitise the Indian logistics industry, which now accounts for approximately 14% of the country’s GDP. This logistics tech company is fostering India’s largest ecosystem of transport MSMEs, shippers, lorry and fleet owners on its website and app, amid the rapidly growing $250 Billion Indian Logistics Sector.
The last decade has seen key sectors transforming digitally and Vahak is leading this transformation for the Indian road logistics sector with its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) backed mobile app that acts as a community-driven open marketplace for load and lorry booking pan India. Through its load-lorry matchmaking feature, Vahak has improved profitability for truckers with increased runs with less dependency on personal networks, larger geographical reach and easy return load booking. Vahak has also created a one-stop shop by bringing financial services like vehicle insurance, safe and secure payments and trucking related value-added services (VAS) to the platform.
In addition to the company’s core AI and ML enabled marketplace, Vahak is coming up with premium services for manufacturers, shippers / load owners and OEMs requiring bulk transport, and new VAS features like cargo insurance, in the next couple of months. These services on top of the existing features of vehicle insurance, GPS, brand and network building, will provide online accessibility and ease of doing business for both, the demand and supply side of the road logistics sector, which carries 80% of the Indian freight traffic. Addressing the roundtable, Karan Shaha, Co-founder, and CEO at Vahak, said, “Our vision is to build a trusted transport community platform that looks out for transporters, fleet owners, and truckers’ growth and well-being. The trucking community is a major contributor to the Indian economy and we have captured less than a per cent of the $250 Billion market. Over the next 4-5 years, we aim to capture 10-20% of the market, in line with deeper internet penetration and growing technology adoption at the last mile.”
With a total of $20.3 Million funding till date, Vahak manages over half a million monthly active load bookings on its app. Detailing about the transactions on the platform, Karan elaborated, “With the transport community directly impacted during the pandemic, our app witnessed 20x growth with physical transport networks moving online. Backed with intuitive UI/UX and translations in 7 languages, transaction volume on the recently launched Vahak Payments platform is showing 100% quarter on quarter growth. Our aim is to achieve $1Million ARR by Dec 2023 backed with positive investments in road infra by the government, higher demand in tier 3 and tier 4 cities and faster adoption of internet at the rural last-mile.”
