Airtel acquihires vehicle tracking logistics platform Quikmile
Post this acquisition, Quikmile’s team will join Airtel X Labs – Airtel’s digital innovation factory, which focuses on IoT, digital engineering, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
Indian telecommunications major Bharti Airtel (Airtel) on Monday announced it will be acquihiring Gurugram -based startup Quikmile, which focuses on building tech-enabled logistics platforms for India.
Post this acquisition, Quikmile’s team will join Airtel X Labs – Airtel’s digital innovation factory, which focuses on IoT, digital engineering, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
Started in 2018, Quikmile leverages digital technologies to bring efficiency, quality, and safety to fleet owners in India’s highly disorganised logistics sector.
This includes easy monitoring of fleet minutiae including engine behaviour, tire conditions, mileage, etc. to remove transportation dynamics such as route planning, demand forecasting, analysing vehicular performance, and organised achievement of targets.
It also resolves manpower issues through monitoring of driver behaviour by tracking complex data including distance travelled per day, maximum and average speed, harsh braking, etc.
Speaking on the acquisition, Harmeen Mehta, Global CIO and Director – Engineering, Bharti Airtel said,
“At Airtel X Labs, we are on an extremely exciting journey to build digital solutions for India’s unique requirements. As we scale up our team with world-class talent, we are thrilled to welcome the Quikmile team as part of Airtel X Labs. India is now among the largest economies in the world but has a highly disorganised and inefficient logistics sector. We see a massive opportunity to solve problems for this segment through scalable technology solutions and workforce management platforms that will make organisations much more efficient”.
In a statement, Airtel said that it used Belong.co’s AI Talent Platform to discover, engage, and close this acquihire.
Earlier in October, Airtel also acquired a minority stake (8.82 percent) in Bengaluru-based startup, Vahan, as part of its startup accelerator programme. Vahan focuses on finding blue collar jobs for millions of young Indians.
Over the last year, startups in the logistics sector have also been attracting private equity investments. YourStory Research shows that in the first five months alone, the logistics sector has already witnessed a capital infusion of $6.25 billion across just eight deals. That’s more than a six-fold increase from the amount it raised last year, across 20 deals.
According to Associated Chambers of Commerce (ASSOCHAM), India can save over $50 billion if the cost of logistics and transportation is reduced from around 14.4 percent of GDP to nine percent of GDP. By comparison, other developing countries spend less than eight percent of their GDP.
(Edited by Megha Reddy)
