Freightwalla: The Future Of Freight Forwarding
At over 200 years old and a market size of over $200 billion in India alone the B2B international logistics industry is as old as it is large. However many of the practices have not changed through the decades. Large and small companies alike that wish to ship goods internationally are faced with an extremely complex and intimidating industry.Pledged to bring-in technology and transparency in the shipping processes, Freightwalla wants to streamline clients’ logistics operations. Its tech enabled platform provides logistics managers an instant costing and pricing tool that consolidates rates transit time, vessel schedules, port charges, and more, from multiple sources in order to make it much easier to compare and select the right shipment plan for their cargo movements. Once a shipment is booked, they also provide online access into all aspects of the booking, including realtime tracking of the cargo, online BL reviews consolidated documentation and a centralised dashboard enabling unprecedented visibility into their cargo movements.
Delving deeper into the company’s offerings and expertise is Sanjay Bhatia, CEO, Freightwalla, all in an exclusive conversation with CEO Insights.
Freightwalla is built on the foundation to provide increased value and transparency to international shippers. How are you transmuting their past experience for better?
Early on in our development we talked to dozens of companies small & large, about the challenges they face in this industry. It all boiled down to three simple things problems with inconsistent pricing, lack of visibility into cargo movements, and lots of manual processes which resulted in wasted time and unnecessary errors.
We knew taking a technological approach to solving the above
issues was the right direction, and we’ve built a service that has been reimaged from the ground-up to solve these problems for our customers. Every service is also backed by our inhouse operations team with decades of experience in forwarding.
Kindly throw some light on the services you offer and how are they adding value for the clients.
We’re taking a look at each step of our customer’s processes to identify how we can further simplify their efforts. For example, for our customers’ planning efforts the traditional process usually took several days with back and forth emails or calls to exchange rates and schedules. Our platform instantly analyzes thousands of possible options and identifies the best suited service providers for our customers’ requirements. We factor in rates, transit times vessel schedules, port charges, and more, from multiple sources in order to find the right match, already saving them several hours of effort.
Once booked, we ensure our customers are always kept up to date on the movement of their cargo by intelligently integrating with Shipping Lines and transporters. Customers can see their movements in land as well as over sea and are notified immediately in case of any anomalies or delays in transit. Our RealTime Tracking tool once helped one of our reputed clients save a $2 million contract when their shipment got delayed at the transshipment port.
Going a step further we also provide our clients reports on shipment performance, freight expenditure country wise breakups and more to help them understand where to improve their processes leveraging the power of data and technology.
That’s interesting! You hold around a decade of professional experience, majority of which is as an Analyst. What triggered you to shift the gear?
Yes I worked as an Analyst at PwC during my initial career years. But
We provide our clients reports on shipment performance, freight expenditure, & country-wise break-ups to help them understand where to improve their processes leveraging data & technology
Kindly throw some light on the services you offer and how are they adding value for the clients.
We’re taking a look at each step of our customer’s processes to identify how we can further simplify their efforts. For example, for our customers’ planning efforts the traditional process usually took several days with back and forth emails or calls to exchange rates and schedules. Our platform instantly analyzes thousands of possible options and identifies the best suited service providers for our customers’ requirements. We factor in rates, transit times vessel schedules, port charges, and more, from multiple sources in order to find the right match, already saving them several hours of effort.
Once booked, we ensure our customers are always kept up to date on the movement of their cargo by intelligently integrating with Shipping Lines and transporters. Customers can see their movements in land as well as over sea and are notified immediately in case of any anomalies or delays in transit. Our RealTime Tracking tool once helped one of our reputed clients save a $2 million contract when their shipment got delayed at the transshipment port.
Going a step further we also provide our clients reports on shipment performance, freight expenditure country wise breakups and more to help them understand where to improve their processes leveraging the power of data and technology.
That’s interesting! You hold around a decade of professional experience, majority of which is as an Analyst. What triggered you to shift the gear?
Yes I worked as an Analyst at PwC during my initial career years. But
while working as a Strategy Consultant in the logistics industry I was exposed to the challenges faced by importers and exporters in shipping of goods overseas. Thereafter, my experience at a venture capital firm helped indentify different technology based business models to address these challenges especially for the Indian market.
Today, along with my team comprising of Bharat Thanvi (CMO), and Punit Java (CTO), we are on the journey to transform the industry for better. While Bharat brings 15 years of experience in the import export industry and has the right expertise in freight forwarding and marketing, Punit leads our engineering and product teams and has extensive experience building technology platform at Amazon and Microsoft. He had been importing coffee as his side-business and empathised with the problems faced by the freight forwarding industry.
What are the developments currently underway at Freightwalla?
There are several areas we are working to develop and improve in the coming year. This includes investment in AI and deep learning to automate the process of extraction and generation of key information for shipping documents, improving the connectivity with the Shipping Lines and other partners for seamless exchange of information, and creating a central hub for simplifying coordination with all parties involved in a booking process, including the buyer, seller service providers and financial institutions. We are very excited about what the future holds for this industry.
How has been the growth of the company?
Over the last one year, we have witnessed an increase of a whopping 700 percent rise in the overall business, and we recently crossed over 450 coroporates on-boarded on our platform.
Key Management
Sanjay Bhatia, CEO
Holding over a decade of professional experience, Sanjay brings with him a deep understanding of the freight forwarding industry. He is also the cofounder of Know Your Vote, a novel business model to improve voter awareness and turnout among the youth of India.
Location: Mumbai
Offerings: Freight Management, Freight Forwarding, Freight Shipping, Ocean Freight, Ocean Transportation, Logistics, Internet Technology, and Web Analytics
Today, along with my team comprising of Bharat Thanvi (CMO), and Punit Java (CTO), we are on the journey to transform the industry for better. While Bharat brings 15 years of experience in the import export industry and has the right expertise in freight forwarding and marketing, Punit leads our engineering and product teams and has extensive experience building technology platform at Amazon and Microsoft. He had been importing coffee as his side-business and empathised with the problems faced by the freight forwarding industry.
What are the developments currently underway at Freightwalla?
There are several areas we are working to develop and improve in the coming year. This includes investment in AI and deep learning to automate the process of extraction and generation of key information for shipping documents, improving the connectivity with the Shipping Lines and other partners for seamless exchange of information, and creating a central hub for simplifying coordination with all parties involved in a booking process, including the buyer, seller service providers and financial institutions. We are very excited about what the future holds for this industry.
How has been the growth of the company?
Over the last one year, we have witnessed an increase of a whopping 700 percent rise in the overall business, and we recently crossed over 450 coroporates on-boarded on our platform.
Key Management
Sanjay Bhatia, CEO
Holding over a decade of professional experience, Sanjay brings with him a deep understanding of the freight forwarding industry. He is also the cofounder of Know Your Vote, a novel business model to improve voter awareness and turnout among the youth of India.
Location: Mumbai
Offerings: Freight Management, Freight Forwarding, Freight Shipping, Ocean Freight, Ocean Transportation, Logistics, Internet Technology, and Web Analytics