Embracing technology: In conversation with Truxapp

Abhinav Chaudhary, COO at Truxapp, discusses the goals, strategies and successes of the trucking app which is set to transform the global road freight world.

1. What is the core principle behind Truxapp?

Truxapp is a technology enabled logistics, venture re-defining the road freight transport landscape. Truxapp is a B2B, asset light model, which uses cutting-edge technology to aggregate demand and supply to make businesses reliable, efficient, and  economical for all parties in the eco-system including clients and transporters alike.

The goal is to create an eco-system where aggregated demand  and supply will work in tandem to build a sector which will be known for its consistency, reliability, transparency, precision, and an innate ability to create value for its partners; a suite of apps that address the existing problems in the logistic space and make it more automated and data driven; and pushing boundaries in the logistic space and creating the next generation transportation data science.

We at Truxapp believe, that this is a journey and not the end. We strive for excellence in everything we do. Our quest is to keep things simple, quick, and economical without compromising quality, and giving the most user–friendly experience to our logistic services user.

2. What are the key industries that Truxapp caters to?

Truxapp is sector and industry agnostic. As Truxapp eradicates the pain points, including significantly reducing road freight costs and almost de-facto becoming a transport arm of any business, it is being well received by all industries, including the ones that may face a slow down.

Being ‘asset light’ also helps Truxapp not depend heavily on any one industry, and as its solutions and services practically cover the complete market needs, it has comfortably hedged its risks and also allowing for a rapid scale up.

The oil and gas market, along with the infrastructure and other construction projects, seem to be seeing some positive movement, allowing some lucrative project cargo business for us. Otherwise it is business as usual for Truxapp with its growing list of clients in (including but not restricted to) FMCG, pharma, building material, commodities, and various verticals serviced through large 3PL companies.

3. What kind of market response has the company seen since its entry into the UAE in 2017?

Truxapp has had a phenomenal response. Within a short period, Truxapp is emerging as a market leader in the UAE, and this has been primarily due to the advanced Truxapp technology and a team of hard core logistics professionals with an aggressive entrepreneurial attitude.

Truxapp has a healthy list of blue chip clients, which is further growing at an astounding rate. This covers practically all sectors and industries, from SMEs to large MNCs, which include, the FMCG sector, pharma, building materials, food and beverage, packaging, and local and cross border distribution, among a long extensive list.

Having developed our own proprietary technology, this gives us and businesses much more flexibility to customise and adapt services – on demand as well. Through the Truxapp platform, businesses can effectively use the resources to collect valuable data, predict production and delivery schedules through customisable dashboards, resulting in enhanced market reach and customer satisfaction. These value-added services give us a unique advantage in the sector.

More importantly, Truxapp’s ability to drastically reduce costs because of bringing efficiency on the client side and reducing down time for the transporters including with enabling reverse haulage is being very well appreciated and embraced.

4. How does the app stand out from its local competitors Trukker and Trukkin?

We have reasons to believe that we have the first movers advantage in this sector. Reasons for stating this is that the Truxapp technology is very advance, comprehensive, and proprietary, which is is completely built and managed in-house. Because of the extensive resources dedicated to R&D, it is also always evolving. The competition is either using off-the shelf generic technology products or it does not have such a comprehensive tech product which has been developed over years, understanding and addressing the pain points of the sector and is extremely holistic, covering and positively affecting all stake holders and the complete order life cycle.

“Truxapp is backed and operated by an experienced team, comprising of professionals who have the knowledge and track record of delivering their expertise to businesses daily.”

We deep dive to defining and understanding the pain points of the sector and prioritising solutions that we would like to develop. Our process includes, identifying the problems, prioritising the solutions, designing, rigorous testing ,and then launch and measure.

Secondly, Truxapp is the real aggregation model; none of the competitors have a real aggregation

model. They are operating either as load boards or are using client facing cosmetic off-the shelf technologies. Today we have over 25,000 commercial vehicles listed and growing.

Due to this aggregation of supply, and thus the ability to real-time communicate with the complete supply side available in the GCC, enables Truxapp to operate in different industry verticals with various flexible models including, adhoc, short and long term lease, short and long term rate contracts. This ability is the only way to organise the un-organised and scale up.

Last but not the least, Truxapp is backed and operated by an experienced team comprising of professionals, who have the knowledge and track record of delivering their expertise to businesses daily,  by managing the complexities of the logistics sector and supporting them to meet their customers’ expectations. This is key, as the sector matures to become more receptive and adaptive to technology, a lot of off-line effort and intelligence goes in to the venture where solutions to pain points are evaluated, tested, and if qualify as the appropriate and adequate solution, built and programmed to be part of the Truxapp technology solution.

5. What are the challenges involved in incorporating technology in a largely traditional industry like logistics and transportation? 

Technology brings in serious transparency. Ironically this is the one single factor which is the biggest challenge, as people are either insecure and/or realise that once transparency sets in, there is a clear and easy visbility to stakeholders and top management at almost real time.

If adapted adequately and appropriately, technologies such as Truxapp actually complement rather than act as a threat. It streamlines the operations of the client as well as the transporters, leaving a lot of cumbersome work to Truxapp technology, which they would otherwise get weighed downed with. It’s a win win solution for all professionals to develop and work in an extremely productive and ethical eco system which benefits all.

6. What are the key trends in road freight to keep an eye out for in 2018?

Two important trends which we are closely following are autonomous vehicles and blockchain. Our team is already brainstorming and working on idea implementations as far as blockchain is concerned, but autonomous vehicles is something which is more complex. Although the UAE government is rightly and aggressively trying to adapt to autonomous vehicles for reasons, which also include and support enviormental issues, there seems to be a gap between the wish versus feasibility to execute as road freight still remains a largely traditional industry with low levels of technology.

We forsee a more phased out approach where companies like Truxapp will set the tone and bring the industry to a level where autonomous vehicles can and will be deployed.

7. What other markets in the region does Truxapp plan to expand its services to?

Truxapp is already in the process of setting up its presence in the GCC and plans to expand to the greater MENASA region as soon it is able to set up a strong foot hold in the primary market of the GCC. Truxapp is already sucessfuly deploying cross border vehicles with its shipments to Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia and this in turn will speed up the set up within the GCC.

At the international holding level, Truxapp is already extremely successfully operating in India for the past three years and the global team is already evaluating the feasibility of spreading its operations to South East Asia. Because of Truxapp’s its experience in serving port movements, Singapore and Indonesia would be the first in that region.

For me personally, I look forward to setting up Truxapp in Hong Kong and China, a place that I have lived and worked for over a decade. It is a tough, but the biggest and most lucrative market.

Read other stories from our March issue here.