[Bootstrap Heroes] How DreamOrbit established itself in US market and bootstrapped its way to profitability
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The logistics and transportation industry in the US is a highly competitive and lucrative business. Companies reap benefits from a highly-skilled workforce and relatively low costs and regulatory burdens.
The country’s highly integrated supply chain network links producers and consumers through multiple transportation modes, including air, rail, maritime and truck transport. To serve customers efficiently, multinational and domestic firms are offering tailored logistics and transportation solutions to ensure coordinated goods movement.
Six years ago, two colleagues, Sanchit Jain and Abhishek Porwal, who were working with a logistics company in India, foresaw the US logistics market and realised the growth and demand in that country. They decided to launch a platform which would offer a complete logistics solutions in the US.
In 2010, they launched DreamOrbit, a Bengaluru-based company that develops software for logistics services providers.
Related read: Logistics to be the game changer for e-commerce in 2016
“In logistics and supply chain, we provide software for independent software vendors and logistic service providers, developing customised and innovative solutions that identify, respond and mitigate the challenges of the logistic and supply industry,” says Sanchit Jain, 40, CEO and Co-founder, DreamOrbit. He is an IIT-Roorkee graduate, and has previously worked with Tata Consultancy Services and Aditi Technologies.
The company has been delivering solutions around supply chain management, freight and fleet management, warehouse management and logistics dashboards, among others.
Its target customers are trucking companies, warehouses, third-party logistics companies, and hyperlocal and last-mile delivery firms.
Expansion in other areas
The company, which started business with logistics, has entered into other categories as well.
Besides offering logistics solutions, the company has also entered the real estate and retail segment.
“We have also developed our own product — realty social CRM, which is customer relationship management. Apart from this we have developed custom mobility, business intelligence and enterprise collaboration solutions for the realty sector,” says Sanchit.
Also read: Flipkart goes beyond e-commerce: eKart to serve offline players now
In the retail sector, it provides omni-channel retail solutions that allow customers to purchase from retail stores, websites and shopping applications. The platform provides a single-view performance dashboard across the supply chain network, sales, marketing and customer services.
Use case of tech solutions
Software development services include product engineering, business analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), mobility, cloud solutions and Microsoft dynamics.
Talking on tech solutions, Sanchit chooses to give example of IoT-based technology in logistics. “DreamOrbit’s IoT-based technology helps a US pizza chain to deliver pizzas at the right temperature to consumers. The company inserts temperature sensors with attached SIM card in the boxes. These sensors send signals indicating the temperature of the pizza to the store manager’s computer. If the temperature drops below a threshold, the manager recalls the pizza and sends a fresh one,” he explains.
Related read: Logistics to be the game changer for e-commerce in 2016
In retail, the platform helps enterprises decide what inventory to keep in which warehouse and how to move this inventory around warehouses at different times of the year so that delivery to the consumer could be from the nearest location, thus reducing cost and shipping faster.
Similarly, it helps courier companies automate parcel delivery with the use of IoT-based automated locks, so that anyone from their workforce could pick and drop parcels without having to come back to the hub, making the delivery process faster.
Making of DreamOrbit
The founders bootstrapped the company with an initial investment of Rs 15 lakh, which was spent in product and team building.
Sanchit says finding the first five customers proved to be the most difficult part. Afterwards, the exceptional services enjoyed by the early customers and the marketing team helped expand the business.
Today, it has 275 employees. It claims to be profitable and its revenue has more than tripled over the past three years.
DreamOrbit has 70 enterprise clients across the world. The US makes up 90 percent of its customer base, while Scandinavia, New Zealand, Australia and India contribute the rest.
In India, it is working on a project for a SAIF Partners-backed food-tech startup. The company has also built IoT-based keyless entry for the Bengaluru-based electric scooter rental services startup YourGreenRide, which is floated by the same founders.
Industry overview
The supply chain and logistics industry is expected to get a $1.9-trillion boost by the end of 2020. According to a recent trend report, about 50 million devices will be connected to the Internet then as compared to the 15 million today.
For any organisation with supply chain or logistics operations, IoT will have game-changing consequences. Keeping this in mind, every SCM and logistics company needs to build more efficiency and visibility in the supply chain. Business intelligence is also playing a vital role in resolving issues, say experts.
According to them, spending in the US logistics and transportation industry totalled $1.45 trillion in 2014, and represented 8.3 percent of annual gross domestic product (GDP). They expect industry investment to correlate with growth in the US economy.
The IoT market in intelligent transportation systems is likely to touch $143.93 billion by 2020 at an estimated CAGR of 8.95 percent.
