Freight not: Cogoport eyes Asia and Europe market

Enjoy a simpler freight booking experience

Let us look at some facts regarding the international freight market. It is estimated at $40bn by 2020 and growing at an estimated 12-14 per cent CAGR. This segment is complex and inefficient. The industry does business in a disjointed way. Plus there is the predominance of outdated, analog systems.

This is the opportunity that Cogoport, an online international freight exchange looks to tap into. They offer price discovery and booking using a data-driven technology solution. This enables a simpler, smoother and seamless freight booking experience for international freight.

Incepted in June 2016, the beta platform as seen today was launched in May this year. The numbers have been strong. The annual revenue run-rate has $10M so far. Their volume run rate has been an annualised 9,000 containers and 2,500 truck moves. Client registration on the platform has been very consistent. Currently they have 1,700 registered clients. They have piloted in the key market of Gujarat and testing it out in Mumbai.

In a chat with Larry Bradley, Purnendu Shekhar, founder & CEO talks about the nuances of his business, his core team and how innovation is the key:

Getting the team together: My personal eureka moment was to get my tech team. They would need to understand the complexity and make it very simple. Team is the key, no matter how novel the idea is. Me, Anurag Dabral, Kunal Rathod, Harsh Kumar and Nishant Dalmia have multiple decades of experience in the freight Industry between us. We have been part of regional and global leadership roles, managed in over 10 countries.

Focus on innovation: The platform’s algorithm is complex. It takes into account millions of line items. These would be prices, transit times and vessel details for one lakh port pairs across the world. Plus there are hundreds of suppliers. All the information runs through distributed computing models. Then it displays best freight rates in the personalized dashboard of an importer and exporter. They can then book in a single click.

Purnendu Shekhar

After the shipment is booked, the operations dashboard allows customers to track the shipments. It also provides numerous analytics around that particular shipment.

Right now our priority is to shrink this century old business into a smart phone screen. In the very short future we want to replace it by a voice command. We are constantly bringing new innovations to this industry. In the near future we will be launching our own cryptocurrency to bring uniformity in freight prices.

We have bootstrapped and also had a seed infusion of $950k from a Singapore based HNI.

Future plans: Our plan is simple, get driven by our customers. We want to give them the solution they want.

In this process our priority is to roll out products around trucking, customs and scale to Pan-India. Very soon we look establish ourselves in Pan-Asia and Europe market.  

Ultimately we want to bring entire eco system on one platform in a very transparent and highly encrypted way so as to make this oldest industry paperless and currency less.

Have you ever had any experience with freight booking? Do share your views.