Restructuring The Logistic Industry With Technology
"You'd rather be directionally right and specifically wrong than be specifically right but directionally wrong."
Starting on this note, Mr Sanjay Bhatia, the co-founder, and CEO of Frieghtwalla, briefly gave an insight into his inspirations and motivations in life. Frieghtwalla is a technology-enabled international logistics company that specialises in cargo import and export across international borders.
Before the idea for Freightwalla was even coined, Sanjay Bhatia used to work as a strategy consultant with PwC, specialising in logistics. Here, the experience with venture capital and private equity firms gave him the knowledge and skills in planning a business and managing finance.
His early work experiences offered him insight into the challenges of international logistics. At first, managing logistics for cargo owners was indeed a complex process to pull out.
This difficult shipping process led Mr Bhatia in realising the need to address the issues and counter them with an end-to-end digitally enabled solution while managing the entire cost and time involved.
Today, Frieghtwalla is dedicated to using state-of-the-art technology and powerful automation tools to reduce the hassles of global trade. Automation of the trade and logistic coordination process has also been linked to a lesser scope of inefficiency and delays.
Frieghtwalla is a digital freight forwarding platform offering freight, transportation, customs clearance services to import and export business ventures. Clients can have a budget planning for their shipments, with detailed insights into routes and schedules, recommended with transparency from Freightwalla.
In addition, every shipment is allowed to be tracked in real-time, with the digital workflow of the whole process and online document management.
Freightwalla also provides intelligent analytics and simplified daily and monthly spending status for the clients. In addition, customised add ons like on-ground transportation, customs clearance, cargo insurance, pre-shipment cargo testing, pre-trip inspection, container survey, and container fumigation through a robust partner network are also part of Freightwalla’s comprehensive deal.
Digitalisation in freight forwarding services has saved businesses 70% of their human resource and labour cost. Another fact about traditional freight forwarding is that the documentation processing used to take up much time, delaying the overall service.
Which has cut down 30% of time consumed in documentation coupled with enhanced accuracy and compliance, has enabled greater control over the whole supply chain.
The 300-year-old logistic industry’s traditional ways were slow. The transition to digitalisation was also simultaneously slow, which was a personal challenge for Mr Bhatia in his entrepreneurial journey.
The digital transition only gained momentum as the focus on supply chain health rose during the pandemic. Digital data compilation and actionable insights helped Freightwalla manage the shipments effectively.
The mission of Freightwalla is to allow transparency and simplicity in its services, as modern businesses require. Freightwalla’s vision of developing a cross-border logistic company managing all complications of international logistics through automation is an ambitious venture. It benefits their clients to focus on the business while Freightwalla seamlessly works the rest with technologies.
In the age of technology, Freightwalla has leveraged digitalisation to provide its clients with an intuitive, easy-to-use, and feature-rich platform. Data analytics and ML algorithm technologies have been at the root of Freighwalla’s digital endeavour, ensuring reliability, transparency, and time and cost-effectiveness.
Friegtwalla has online planning and costing tool that has made shipment planning easier and document processing faster. As a result, fewer errors and delays have also reduced excess spending.
In addition, with an emphasis on automation, they have produced centralised dashboards, configurable daily shipment reports, and shipment analytics, which has been enough to support better business decision-making.
The dream of making a ‘MakeMyTrip’ for freight through Freightwalla was first challenged when they finally realised that the actual performance of logistic functions needs improvisation for retaining clients. And automation happened to be a solution available, and with their focus shifting to automation, they could start scaling the business.
Frieghtwalla was one of the first companies to use cutting-edge technology to revolutionise international maritime logistics. Since 2017, it has had over 300 clients, 30+ shipping line partners serving over 1000+ port pairs, with the entire network spanning across 120+ countries.
The pandemic has been a blessing to Freightwalla, which clocked 10X growth in the past 2 years. Some noteworthy recognitions are mentioned below.
● Top 10 APAC Logistics Firms in 2022 by Supply Chain Digital
● Digital Transformation Award, 2020 by IMC
● Startup Watchlist: Indian Logistics Tech Startups to Watch out for in 2020 by Inc42
● Top 10 Emerging companies of India, 2019 by CEO Insights
● Top 100 Startups in India to watch, 2019 by SutraHR
● Top 10 APAC Logistics Solution Providers, 2018 by CIO Advisor
Mr Sanjay Bhatia, the Co-Founder CEO of Freightwalla, spearheads the growth strategy, business development, finances and manages 100 employees working at the company. Among the other Co-Founders of Freightwalla, Punit Java is currently responsible as CTO, leading the Product Team.
Bharat Thanvi is the third and last Co-Founder of Freightwalla, along with being the CMO, handling business expansion and revenue generation via new opportunities and building strategic alliances.
All of the leadership team of Freightwalla has had experience in various MNCs and Indian logistic companies working in senior positions. The joint vision helps them thrive and bring the best to the clientele.
As technological advancement proceeds further, there is expected to be an influx of AI and ML technologies. Companies are also likely to lean on IoT to get the job done faster, simpler, and better. Another critical technological intervention has been blockchain technology usage.
The sole purpose of blockchain technology has been linked with the decentralisation of information and documents, preventing any chance of data manipulation. Freightwalla already being the frontrunner in the industry, scalability and growth seem inevitable.
Freightwalla seems to rely upon four pillars. These are transparency, customer obsession, ownership & excellence, innovation & technology. Transparency is offered through clear communications, timely and consistent updates made to the platform. Freightwalla handles customers’ problems as their challenges.
Each member of the Freightwalla team is dedicated to improving the processes and technology that help their clients and help them commit to the deliveries with a better time management program. Technology has been their stronghold, while innovation from each member has pushed them further.
By continuously investing in technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, electronic Bill of Lading, and the Internet of Things (IoT), Freightwalla has provided efficient services to their clients.
Efficient end-to-end freight management services are also considered a key priority for the team. Freightwalla wishes to expand to a PAN-India basis before going global gradually.
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