Cabs providing intercity transport? Check.
Food delivery options across the country? Check.
Efficient intercity logistics? Still under development.
It is this market that attracted entrepreneurs and husband-wife duo, Amarjeet Singh and Sangeeta Yadav set out to utilize this gap and establish Portflip. Drawn along the same lines of functioning as any other app-based transport, Portflip provides truck booking services for means of transportation in Mumbai and Pune. Customers can simply book a truck, either through a phone call or on their website or Android app, track its location and status and have options of either directly paying the drivers or paying online. The platform is only a facilitator bridging the gap between customers and truck drivers, owning none of the vehicles partnered with them. With over 20,000 downloads on the Google Play Store, the company has a separate app for its driver-partners that enable them to decide their working hours and accept trip requests. Portflip founders claim that “driver-partners are on-boarded only after thorough vetting.”
“Initially, we did research and development and studied the market for over six months. We faced issues and challenges in getting the right skill set to execute our vision, getting partners adapted to use technology, training them, and maintaining the supply as partners can log off from their devices, leading to a lot of rejections for customers,” Sangeeta says. Facing funded players in Intracity logistics like Tim Draper backed Blowhorn, HipShip, etc, Portflip refuses to be fazed. With a mission to “create a logistics system through innovation, dedication, and technology”, the duo concentrated in constructing a business model and recruiting employees that can understand, positively contribute to the same as well as come up with creative solutions to overcome challenges. Currently, a team of eight, the founders claim that the app completes a total of 350 orders in a month and earns a revenue of Rs 40 to Rs 50 lakh.
An important aspect of their business model is to build strong working relationships with every participant in their professional vicinity. The Portflip team holds regular meetings with investors, partners and clients to take into consideration opinions, views and suggestions and working to incorporate them into the company. Based on a commission-based revenue model, their key clients include mostly rental furniture-based companies, FMCG, industrial and petroleum goods and products. Creating an “efficient, sustainable and reliable solution”, Potflip is all set to innovate their way through to the top of the transportation game.