Startup aims to digitise road freight transport
Truck It In looks to transform Pakistan’s $25b road freight logistics industry
Despite the government’s focus on trade and connectivity and billions of dollars of goods transported each year, Pakistan’s road freight industry has long remained stuck in an outdated manual system.
Truck It In, a Pakistani digital logistics company, aims to simplify, streamline and modernise the road freight transport for millions of businesses.
The digital transformation will help increase the efficiency of Pakistan’s $25 billion (Dh91 billion) road freight industry.
The Karachi-based startup powered by a technology platform is directly connecting shippers with truckers in a traditional middlemen heavy market making the transport system efficient, said Raza Afzal, co-founder at Truck It In.
Cut inefficiencies
The trucking platform is “at the very early stages of transforming a critical industry and aim to help over 3 million businesses save $1 billion annually in supply chain inefficiencies” said Mohammad Sarmad Farooq, CEO and co-founder.
The start-up that aims to become the largest trucking platform in Pakistan was launched to solve the pain points in road freight transport due to traditional broker practices and outdated methods.
“Shippers had to spend hours on phone calls with brokers to find someone to pick their load. This system was less reliable, costly and time-consuming” Afzal told Gulf News.
After identifying the huge gap between the shippers and carriers, the company says it is “working relentlessly to improve the experience of both businesses and truckers”.
Phenomenal response
The co-founders thought they’d have to spend a lot of time persuading businesses to use their app. “But the response was phenomenal and beyond our expectations. We offered them exactly what they were looking for” also known as Uber for the trucking industry.
They started commercial operations in January 2021 when many global businesses were bouncing back from the pandemic. The company has grown over 18 times since Sept. 2020 when the pilot project, he said.