New Trend: Emergence of Online Market Place for ODC Transport Services

It seems that Indian industrial Heavy transport industry marketplace is finally growing up. 

I have been getting some correspondences from websites in India who are offering a common market place for Service Providers and Service Seekers. The trend is common in the US, Europe, Australia etc...Its like metaljuction.com which is for the Indian Steel Industry. 

It is to be seen as to how this goes when Heavy Transporters are generalized as "Trolla Waley" or "Transport Wala" and how the humble Transport waley Lalaji understands the benefits from this paradigm shift. Indian transporters apart from the rare breed of professional transport company rely more on their humble red diary and telephone. There is hardly any differentiating factor where everyday a new transport company either enters or quits heavytransport.

Websites like our Loadkhoj.com, Loadjunction.com or the american import Uship.com are now trying to transform Transport Nagar into a webpage and replace Transport waley Lalaji's red diary with laptops. Tall ask but we had to start somewhere.

I chanced on an email interview with the founders of www.loadkhoj.com. Following are the excerpts from the response from the co-founders, Mr.Nilesh Agarwal and Mr. Pawan Chawla, both BE from KJ Somaiya and have experience in ODC transport:

HeavyTransportIndia: What was your Aim behind this project?

Load Khoj: Most of the Indian transportation industry relies mainly on close contacts and past experience to get business. This often limits the scope of their services to certain locations, routes, or customers. Such factors increase dependencies and hamper growth. Information about available truck or load is mostly shared over the phone, an inefficient, monotonous, and resource consuming task, and the information usually only travels a few links deep, often not in time, thereby reducing the possibility of finding return loads, which drives up costs. By enabling a better means of communication and information sharing, we hope to crank up the efficiency of the process of acquiring loads and trucks for transportation purposes. 

The idea is to enable freight owners and transporters to have instant access to a large pool of live information about the requirements of the market such as available freight (goods to be transported) as well as trucks/trailers across the country. This information is presented in a convenient and intuitive manner, so as to facilitate the user in comparing and finalizing the best deal, thereby saving time and eliminating the need for making multiple phone calls, and to serve as a tool for expanding our user's professional network.

HTI: How does your model work?

LK: With LoadKhoj.com, a freight owner looking for transportation simply fills in one’s freight details (type of load, type of truck required, dimensions, source and destination, etc) and posts it through a form on our website. Similarly, transporters post their truck (by entering current location in source, and preferred destinations if necessary) as soon as the truck is available. Using the data provided, the website automatically matches suitable truck/trailers with the loads based on certain filters. Both the users have access to all the information of the other party (details of load, truck, company info, contact info, etc). Users get instant E-mail and SMS notifications as soon as a match occurs, allowing them to save time on follow up calls.

HTI: How would it benefit the subscribers to your website?

LK: The website will help freight owners and transporters by facilitating :

1. A Broader Customer Base :  Approach a lot more people in a more targeted fashion.
2. Significantly Ease the Process of Business Acquisition : All that a transporter has to do is post a truck along with some key information, and matching freight is automatically displayed.
3. Simplifying Information Exchange : Avoid communication losses, by conveying detailed written information on the job that can be reviewed any time, eliminating the need to call up various suppliers or transporters repeatedly.
4. Increase Capacity Utilization and Reduce Waiting Times : When there is a live database with up to the minute information, it leads to lesser waiting time for finding a truck/load. It also reduces truck idling time, so more time of your truck is spent transporting.
5. Finding Return Loads : The database increases the chances of finding load to haul back home, so the truck is in use even while returning, and the cost benefits can be passed on.  

HTI: Wish you all the best!!

Seems like we are talking serious business now.