“When I met Jayaram in 2015, we saw a lot of industries changing from offline to online but logistics was a segment where everything was driven by pen and paper. People were still stuck in Excel sheets or Word documents, and nothing beyond that. That’s where we saw a huge opportunity, where the inefficiencies that were played consisted of too many stakeholders and manual processes. That’s how the idea of Lobb was formed,” says Venu Kondur, Co-founder and CEO, LOBB.
Founded in 2015 by Venu Kondur and Jayaram Raju K, LOBB provides truck availability information, by region and markets, to transporters, agents and truckers. Building solutions ground-up that are relevant at a global scale, the startup aims to empower the small truck owners and logistics through their proprietary Truck Discovery Model by creating a unique network of fleet, routes and nodes aligned to demand and supply and move to a machine-based matching engine.
“The trucks in India run in long haul for only about 13 to 15 days when they can actually optimally run anywhere between 20 to 25 days. And this is largely driven by opaque demand requirements and supply availability. So, the core problem that we are trying to address is today’s information asymmetry. So what we are really looking to see is how the guys who are running about 13 to 15 days in a month can actually give more mileage in a given month,” adds Venu.
Leveraging the best of tech
Disrupting the conventional methods of discovering trucks via phone calls, LOBB uses a host of factors to help logistics companies find a fleet through a mobile application. He says, “Based on factors such as who would like to go in which particular route, what type of material he would like to carry, at what price point they are comfortable, pattern of the routes they take, and other backend factors, we help these logistics companies to find demand and tracking requirements through our app.”
Venu believes that governmental initiatives like demonetisation and GST have played a significant role in digital adoption in the country. With more people having access to bank accounts and digital wallets, there is a huge scope for logistics tech in India.
LOBB clocks a month on month growth of 10 to 15 percent. “We have expanded to over eight locations including Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Coimbatore. We intend to expand to about 25 locations across pan India,” shares Venu.
The trust factor
“The industry that we operate in is based on trust. For a single truck, goods worth a few crores are usually in transit. So, the trust factor matters the most to us. In line with this, we opted for a .in domain for our website. We wanted people to know that we are an Indian company based in India so that they can trust us,” says Venu.
The National Internet Exchange for India (NIXI) is helping many businesses across the country to get a .in or .Bharat domain. Enterprises irrespective of their scale and size can avail a .in domain with the help of NIXI. It is affordable and can be availed in more than 22 languages for businesses coming from all regions of the country.
Venu explains, “The first interface is your website, where people really understand who your customers are ? And can we be trusted in terms of high value transactions? So, the first point of verification, which is a website, plays a significant role in the logistics space.”
Sharing his vision for the future, he says, “While in India, we spend about 15 percent of our GDP on logistics, developed countries spend about 6-7 percent. So, we aim to create a pan India network using state-of-the-art technology which can actually reduce the logistical spend on GDP.
