"You have to work for 10 years to be an overnight success in B2B," Deepesh Agarwal, MoveInSync
This article is sponsored by Qualcomm Ventures
In 2009, Deepesh Agarwal, Akash Maheshwari and Anuvrata Arora began mulling over the idea of starting up in the carpooling space, in order to tackle issues of traffic congestion in bigger cities. But research led them to understand that, since most big and medium sized organisations offered transport facilities for employees, this would be a better area for them invest in. The employee transport sector was highly disorganised, and this made things difficult for both companies and their staff. There were also concerns about the safety of women employees while using cabs from multiple suppliers, some of whose drivers did not have proper paperwork and records.
Starting Up
Armed with an idea that could go a long way in streamlining employee transportation, MoveInSync was created and went through incubation at the Indian School of Business. Google, Hyderabad was one of their earliest clients. MoveInSync’s transport management platform had just been developed, and, like any new product, was not without bugs. Research and development is ingrained in the DNA of a company like Google, so it was a very understanding client, allowing MoveInSync the space it needed to work through multiple versions of their platform before arriving at one that worked perfectly. Today, MoveInSync has a proven good track record in assisting companies in managing their employee transportation cost-effectively, as well as more efficiently, with the use of state-of-the-art technology.
Employee Transportation Solution (ETS)
Their flagship Employee Transportation Solution, for employee transport management, is offered as a SaaS (Software as a Service) product, and offers the following advantages.
- Provides transport managers complete control and visibility over their transport operations in real time.
- Leads to the right sizing of transport capacity, and removes any excess vehicles from the fleet, resulting in up to 20% cost savings on the entire transportation costs.
- Keeps records, making billing more accurate and paperless, thereby improving the company’s carbon footprint.
- Enhances the safety of women employees during transit, through intelligent routing calculation to plan routes that avoid having women as the first or last to be picked up or dropped.
QPrize experience
MoveInSync was one of the finalists in Qualcomm Ventures’ QPrize seed investment competition. Though it was not the winner, MoveInSync was found promising by Qualcomm Ventures and chosen for funding. The mentoring received by the team during the competition, the resulting confidence, and the privilege of being associated with a brand like ‘Qualcomm’ helped the startup immensely in its early days.
Today, MoveInSync caters to 25 enterprises transporting 75000 employees. Most of their clients are Fortune 500 companies from the banking, manufacturing and technology sectors. Google, Adobe, Oracle and Microsoft are some of them.
Sales and Revenues
Headquartered in Bengaluru, MoveInSync currently provides employee transport solutions to clients in 11 cities, even smaller ones like Vizag and Barmer. MoveInSync is a B2B business, and their target market consists of big organisations, which are a difficult sell for a new startup. But since MoveInSync was a market creator, and offered a solution to a longstanding problem faced by prospective clients, it did not face too many difficulties when it came to selling its product. After all, big organisations spend Rs 100 to 200 crores on transport per year, and a 20% reduction in this cost makes a huge difference.
The MoveInSync team is currently 94 employees strong. The company’s revenue in 2014 was almost Rs 5 crores, and continuing its fast paced growth MoveInSync is expected to double its revenues in 2015. The team is also anticipating a 4x growth in user base.
According to Deepesh,
B2B startups are not sexy, but have to be a solid business proposition. You have to work for 10 years to be an overnight success in B2B!
Word of mouth and brand equity certainly help to a good extent in the employee transportation sector.
Funding
MoveInSync has recently raised $3.5 million worth of Series A funding from Saama Capital, Inventus Capital and Qualcomm Ventures (read more about MoveInSync’s funding). It has thus embarked on a new stage in its startup journey, and Deepesh feels that there is more of an order to the madness, and a compliance to rules and processes. Its investors understand that, as a young startup, it is not a publicly listed company, and that its members are still climbing the learning curve, and thus they offer support and mentoring without being interfering. All three founders feel they have received valuable insights through these experiences.
Future Plans
The MoveInSync team has plans to improve their functioning style by claiming ownership of more of the ecosystem. For example, they want to increase cab profitability too, so that supplier side also stands to gain along with their corporate clients. This is to ensure that all stakeholders are taken care of through the system, and that it is a win-win situation for all. MoveInSync will be expanding to serve clients in Jaipur, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram soon.
Apply for QPrize 2015 today! To submit your business plan for the QPrize, visit here now. Last date for applications – July 17th, 2015.