LOTrucks makes moving a smooth affair
The last mile delivery market is very large in India but is highly disorganized and dominated by mini trucks mostly run by driver cum owners. At present, there is a huge mismatch in the market between consumers and truck drivers.
While drivers are not being able to access the large demand around them, consumers find it difficult to get a reliable and efficient solution. To organize this segment, a slew of startups like The Porter, Blowhorn and Shippr have emerged in Mumbai and Bangalore. On the lines of above startups - Bharath Narayan, Goutham and Ram Narayan conceptualised LOTrucks.com.
LOTrucks is essentially an aggregator of trucks in Bangalore and provides trucks on demand to transport goods for customer, just by placing an order online. It’s an on demand marketplace logistics model.
The startup leverages technology to identify the closest truck for moving ones goods with safe and reliable drivers.
“When we noticed some important issues like large idle time of vehicles, no standard pricing, customer-driver communication gap and billing problems, we thought this can be addressed using technology. Going forward we identified clear purpose in weeding out pain of last mile delivery. Thus began the journey of LOT: Logistics Optimization & Transportation,” says Bharath.
With its vendor app LOT is trying to reduce the time gap between order booking and processing, and as a result it’s able to process the orders within 30 minutes and aim to reduce this time gap to 10 minutes.
Importantly, LOTrucks charges customers based on the distance travelled thus eliminating price negotiations between drivers and customers.For better communication,LOTrucks trains drivers on how to communicate, with Bangalore being a city of migrants,its becoming tough for both customers and drivers to communicate. Currently, LOT is accepting only COD payment and integrating its online payment facility in soon to be launched mobile app.
LOT has a network of 500 plus trucks i.e. LOT MINI (Tata Ace with 800kg capacity) & LOT MAX (TATA 407 with 2.5ton capacity) all over Bangalore. With this wide reach and access LOTrucks has already served more than 2000 happy customers within the span of threemonths since its inception. The company’s clientele base includes SmartOffix Ventures, Officesmart.in, LANASOL Pvt.Ltd and Tatva Organics. It’s in advanced talks with other major retailers and manufacturers in Bangalore to be their last mile logistics partner.
At present, the company plans to focus only onBangalore. “We have been exposed to new challenges since we started our operation and we aspire for asmooth process in Bangalore and then probably move to other cities,” adds Bharath.
Recommended Read: [Startup Watchlist] Solving problems for urban India
Roadway logistics is a $150 billion industry in India, of which $30 billion is the last mile delivery. If you look at its urban split, the market size is estimated to be around $10-12 billion and more than 90% market is unorganized. The potential in segment has been attracting entrepreneurs to carve out success stories from this unexplored niche.
LOTrucks competes with likes of Bangalore based Shippr and Blowhorn and Kae Capital backed The Porter which are also in the same space.