Interview with Janardan Dalmia, Founder & CEO, Trukkin

Welcome to ChainTech, the show and podcast focusing on the latest trends in supply chain, procurement, and logistics technology. My name is Max Henry from the Global Supply Chain Council, and together with my co-host and special guest, we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in supply chain. From early stage to unicorns, And from cutting-edge technology to the people using it to help drive more innovative, agile, and resilient supply chains around the world. This is ChainTech. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of ChainTech. I'm your host, Max Henry, from the Global Supply Chain Council. And I'm joined today with my co-host, Shantanu Laxman. Hi, Shantanu, how are you?

Good, Max, how are you? Nice to be here with you and Janardhan and you together.

Thanks again for joining us on another episode of the show as we continue to host some of the most interesting GenTech founders and discuss the rapid rise of supply chain logistics and procurement technology across the APAC region. As we jump into today's conversation, I just want to make sure again that you are aware of our Chaintech platform that we recently launched. You can visit it at chaintech.net, and you can also find all the previous episodes of the show at chaintech.show. So today we are joined by, uh, Janadan Damia, who's the founder and CEO of Trucking. Hi, JD, how are you?

I'm doing very well. Pleasure to connect with you, Max and Chandan. Thanks for inviting me.

Okay, so maybe we'll get started with you and let's start maybe by what brought you to set up and launch Truckee. Maybe give us more details about your actual background before you actually launched this company.

Sure. So my name is Janardhan Dalmia. Popularly or fondly, I would say, everyone calls me JD from a very young age. I grew up in India and then once I finished my schooling, I left for States to do my undergrad at Purdue. And post my undergraduation, I started my career in investment banking, doing M&A, capital raising, traditional investment banking with Bank of America and then subsequently with Barclays, initial part of my career in New York and then in Dubai. And, you know, at the end of 2015-16 is when I was mulling over a few ideas and opportunities, and that's how I ventured into trucking. So that's a quick info about my background.

So what motivated you to start another company?

So when I was doing investment banking, I used to travel a lot in the region here locally, and during one such travels to Saudi Arabia, I was sitting with the CEO of a fairly large public company who spoke about how big of a logistics spend he has in his own company and how he has been dependent on a very traditional old-school logistic companies who have not really cared about upgrading the service. But on the other hand, we were learning a lot about on-demand services and aggregation from various other industries such as, you know, ride-hailing, primary example, what Airbnb was doing with, you know, sharing of services. We were also seeing some of the giants who are now— were being just born in India and outside, companies like BlackBuck, Porter Convoys of the world. And there was a lot of talk around, you know, logistics as a startup globally. And so when I took that and when I saw what the problem statement was, initially I thought about how about we go to India and help bring one of the companies from India to the region. And when I met and understood, you know, one thing was clear that there is obviously a lot of opportunity to do something like this in the region. But at the same time, you need to be present on the ground, knowing the know-how. And the more and more I just, you know, researched, spoke to companies, transporters, truck drivers, the idea kept on getting revalidated, and I almost got sucked into it. And that's how Trekkin was born. Shantanu?

Yeah, Shantanu, go ahead.

Yeah, Jonathan, actually, that's the same thing on the same question which Max was asking you about, the question on how you went into Trekkin. So I just wanted to ask you, from a banker to trucking transformation, is there any kind of a trigger that it made you get into that business as a whole?

Look, yes, it's a great question because it's a very two different profile of work that, you know, that I'm doing. But it's always in the hindsight that you're able to connect the dots. And definitely, you know, cutting my teeth doing corporate finance for a significant number of years, in hindsight now, when I think, did taught me a lot in terms of even when I was looking at getting into the trucking business about how you want to step away from the normal problem statement, but how to become and take a macro view or an eagle's eye view of what potentially can be created and how you can create a valuable enterprise. And I think certainly if I wouldn't have had that kind of experience working in a, you know, huge bank like Barclays or Bank of America and dealing with largest of companies on several investment banking opportunities, I probably would not have that kind of vision to bring it into what I'm doing today. So I think in hindsight, when I look at things and I connect the dots, I certainly see that there has been a lot of learning which has kind of subconsciously helped me build what I'm trying to build. But the transition was very coincidental. I would say it wasn't ever for me that, oh, I want to leave banking, I want to do something and I want, you know, that was not the I was enjoying what I was doing and keeping the banking hat on. When I came across the opportunity, the more I researched and revalidated, it became apparent that there is a big shift which is gonna come. And if I don't do it, someone else will do it. So let's focus on that and get your hands dirty. So I took a leap of faith and that's how I got into it.

So in just a few sentences, JD, what is Trucking doing exactly? What kind of solution are you providing?

So Truckin is a techno logistics platform through which we cater to B2B segment, which means if there is any business or corporates who need to move their cargo from point A to point B, Truckin would be their solution. And instead of in the old school way where you would be dependent on heavy asset owners Here we would ensure that you get the most competitive price for the best possible service and a brand that you can trust, which is scaled from across the geographies. So for the shipper, it's a one-stop solution, hopefully. And on the transporter side as well, providing them with backloads, increasing their own asset utilization and increasing their efficiency. So we enable people to focus on their core competencies. So if someone is a transporter, their core competency is about driving. If someone is a shipper, their core competency about manufacturing or trading or distributing of certain goods. And we take away all the pain points in the middle where how the logistics should be managed. And that's what our aspiration is.

Janhathan, what about the landscape that you're looking at? Basically when I say landscape and logistics startup in your country.

So look, when I look at logistics, you know, it comprises of 4 or 5 different things, which is rail, air, sea, land, warehousing, etc. We play primarily in the land transport segment. As you can imagine, Middle East, or for a matter of fact, any large country or small, you need goods to be moved, moved from point A to point B. Even if, you know, it comes at the airport or if it comes at your seaport, you need someone to move the goods around, whether in your raw material form, finished goods, semi-finished, distribution, however it needs to be taken care of. Middle East is a very unique landscape where it's almost like United States of Middle East, where all the small countries are kind of connected with each other and, you know, dependent on each other for the trade and commerce. So clearly, there's a huge amount of land movement which happens. I guess the best way to think about the significance of the demand in road transport is even if you see around your own room, all the things that you see has at some point moved in some sort of a commercial vehicle, or not even in one, maybe a couple of times, whether in their raw material form or in their finished good form. So it's heavily dependent, you know, you need a very solid connectivity and someone who can take care of this whole supply chain. And that's how the landscape looks like. The market size is significantly large. If you look at GCC alone, it's almost, you know, if you combine all the aspects of logistics, it's almost $125 to $130 billion, out of which land transport is approximately 20-25% of the market. So when we're talking about $25-30 billion of market, it's extremely large. And this gets revalidated anywhere else you see in the world. You have large corporate giants like DHLs of the world and TNT and Aramex, Kunal Nagel, Shankar, etc. And still there are like hundreds of transporters who— or thousands of transportation companies who provide services. And despite that, 70% of the market is highly fragmented, which are guys, 1 to 10 truck owner guys. So So it's a very, very large market play.

What are some of the biggest benefits that your solution is bringing to your customers? Because again, as you say, there are already a number of 3PLs and transportation companies in the region. So what are you— what is Trucking, you know, bringing that the traditional 3PLs are not providing?

See, when you are a fragmented, highly fragmented market, the standardization of service is extremely hard. Also, when you are highly fragmented, you do not have that scale to provide a company an overall level of service that they desire. Almost all the companies only focus on providing great service for the top 20% of your clients, you know, but then there is 80% of SMEs, which is basically, you know, is not very much catered to. So those are all the things that, you know, we take into account. We want to create a significantly large enterprise, which is, which has its presence, you know, all the way from Jordan and Egypt to to Oman in the south, and, you know, from Pakistan and India on the, you know, east to wherever we can go on the west and provide a regional solution to almost all kinds of companies, providing them a very upgraded level of service and at the same time removing a lot of pain points for transportation companies and customers.

Okay, where is the target market, uh, and also the size of the market? Uh, where, where, which are the, uh, market that you are focusing on, the sectors I mean? And, uh, is the implementation is different from other, uh, you know, uh, service providers? How are you integrating that?

So if I— I think there was a bit of a network issue. But if I heard your question correct, you're asking what kind of sectors do we serve?

Yes. Yeah, that's correct.

So Truckin has moved everything from chicken to houses. If I were to say that, you know, from the time we have started, we have probably executed over 100,000 of truck movements across all kinds of locations, serving all kinds of sectors, providing all kinds of movement. So which revalidates that we are very sector agnostic, product agnostic, vehicle agnostic. So we focus on the service, we focus on maintaining the price, for the customers. And at the same time, we keep on building the capabilities to be able to deliver niche movements wherever required. So long story short, we have moved pretty much everything and that's something which we are very proud of.

So, JD, you mentioned services. Do you consider yourself more a technology company? Because it looks like you are trying to aggregate the offer from the transportation companies Mainly for SMEs, but are you also providing services, the actual logistics and transportation service?

Yeah, we absolutely provide transportation service as well. So that's why we call ourselves as a techno-logistic firm, whereby, you know, we take something which was done old school way and try to modernize and digitize it, where, you know, and that in turn should create a significant amount of efficiency in the overall Change. Absolutely.

But where do you see yourself evolving? Because we see a lot, we've talked to, you know, to a number of lock tech companies who do the same thing in other countries in Asia. And many of them have told us that they actually, they provide the service just to kind of learn, you know, and kind of, you know, polish their offering. But down the road, you know, 5 years from now, they want to become a technology company and just focus on the technology. Do you see yourself evolving more as a tech provider, or you, you know, and eventually drop, you know, the physical part of your service?

Look, it's— I mean, we don't have such plans to drop a physical part of our service, but what we think is significantly gonna be enhanced is by infusing technology in all the aspects, which means some things which are probably done in a manual way today in the industry could be digitized and can be done in a far more technical or technological way. So in terms of saying that we're going to drop a certain kind of a service is not possible, or I mean, that's not something that we have thought about consciously. Our idea is that we are building something to cater to our customer and whether whatever customer needs is basically that is what we're going to build and improvise and bring efficiency. So that's one side of the equation. The second side of our equation is the transportation providers themselves, the guys who actually drive the truck, etc. And we need to significantly help enhance their own ecosystem in terms of how they earn their living and make it much more smoother and remove a lot of bumps throughout their lifecycle. Now, and throughout this, if we are able, while solving this, if you're providing a service to a customer, I'm not sure what others mean by saying that they will, you know, stop providing the service but yet become something while they're providing the service today. So I think that's a bit of a confusing state for a lot of companies, maybe. And I'm not sure what that would mean 5 years from now. But this is how we approach the business.

But, but JD, as you are, you're in a hybrid kind of provider, right? So you provide technology, you provide services. By being hybrid, you are also competing on one side with the 3PLs, on the other side with a pure tech, you know, locktech company. So Who are your competitors? Who would you consider to be competitors in the region, in the Middle East for you?

See, to start with, competition is everywhere. You know, to someone to say that, okay, I do not have competitors, I think that's a very— I guess I'm not sure what kind of view would that be. Of course, we compete with 3PLs as well, and we keep, you know, compete with traditional transporters as well, and we compete with maybe other digital logistics players as well. The idea is that you're competing with them at maybe at different stages of your company's lifecycle. So the day one when we started the business, I don't think we were competing with anybody because, you know, we were nobody. You know, people would be like, you know, who are these kids starting the business? You know, they're not a competition. As you start to provide a value-added service to the customer, and customer starts giving you the business, suddenly you are in the business then. And then whoever was providing the service to them, you become their competition, which was, let's say, uh, when we started, the traditional brokers, the man with the phone, uh, that was the first competition. But as the business grows and you achieve scale and you have that vision of building a very large scaled company, the same brokers who were your competitors start becoming your suppliers. So similarly, asset owning companies, you know, the large ones initially would not see you as a competition, but over a period of time would start seeing you as a competition, and over a period of time they will become your suppliers. Our idea is not to disrupt someone's business, and that's where the, I guess, the gap is. Because a lot of people, when they think that someone is coming, they think, oh, someone is there to disrupt my business. So obviously everyone will think that we are competing with everyone. And, you know, at some point in our lifecycle, we may would have been, but our idea has never been to disrupt the man with the phone, his business, right? His earning livelihood, our business, our idea of my idea was never to disrupt the transporters' business. I have always liked to call ourselves as an enabler. We want to help make that broker person earn his living in a far more organized manner, at the same time providing companies far more better control of the service that they get. And similarly for the transporters, they might not be able to get the business from maybe the same company, but through us they would have probably avenues to make their living from various other companies. We are a marketing channel for them. And not only will we provide them increased asset utilization from point A, but from point B as well, because we would be present at point B and we would ensure that their idle time is kind of reduced. So yeah, I guess when you look at competition, it's very, I guess, subjective. And it also depends upon at what lifecycle do you see you're competing with. So I think everyone's our competition, but again, what we are trying to build is to hopefully help for everyone in terms of what we build. And lastly, I would like to add on that point, that market is very, very large. We just spoke about $25-30 billion market, you know, we spoke about—

Yeah.

That is in the world, you have DHL, FedEx, UPS, TNT, and, you know, in numerous number of significant number of large transporters or logistic companies, and still they have room to play. So we do not need to disrupt someone else's business, or we don't need someone else to fail for us to win. And that's how I look at it.

Yeah, just a question on, you know, I was just looking at your system, which when you look at other companies, like they have legacy systems, you know, ERP systems, which they already have in their system, system for tracking and other things. How do you think you can integrate your software into them? Or is there any provision that you can integrate your software into them providing their focused applications or provisions? Anything which you can help them?

Absolutely, Chandan. And this is where our focus is when we talk about technology and what we are building with the server service. is how to streamline customers' logistics department, right? So there could be a very large customer who has been legacy on SAP or some sort of an ERP. Absolutely, this is where the tech systems go, that how do we understand what their requirement is and, you know, build and integrate something which will be significantly, you know, time reduction or cost reduction for them or bring more efficiency. And this is the future and this is what we aspire and working towards. And that's like one of the problem statements, for example.

Yeah, as you know, certainly this market which you're in has a high amount of competition. If you ask me, in India, there's no n number of competitors around there for a long time, even now, in a big way, in the sense of what you're saying, the tracking, even for container, like container tracking application. There are many applications which connects your, you know, existing software which can integrate in between. So there, do you think still there is a lot of ground to play there with your marketing strategy?

See, that's where I think the differentiation comes between someone who says that they will only be the, you know, solution technology provider but not actual service provider. And that's the differentiation when I meant that you, if you are just providing, for example, you know, Gmail as a service or Hotmail as a service, you know, you would obviously have one or the other. You don't need 3 email accounts for the same name technically. So similarly, unless you provide that technology along with a service, till then you are not significantly value adding in a customer journey. And at least from my personal point of view, that is significantly important. Everyone who started in this business and probably maybe still, maybe there could be some startups who might be coming in, they start with a very easy— or not easy, I would say with a mindset that I'm gonna go and build something and overnight I'm gonna be Uber of trucks, right? And this is what something you will hear. And 99% of them, you know where they land up being, they become something of nothing. So unless you are genuinely adding service, and because see, again, we are not a ride-hailing company. I mean, as much as there are similarities, there's a lot of differentiations. We are a logistics company. Our customers are corporates. A corporate means they are a huge factory sitting somewhere Unlike ride-hailing, where the taxi driver doesn't know where you are as a passenger, and you don't know where the other person is, the driver, here you have a factor which is visible. It's not like something I'm showing to a transporter that, oh, wow, look, something new has emerged. They already know that. But because of certain lacking in their system, which means they do not have a corporate level of service, they cannot institutionalize it, they cannot professionalize it. So the companies don't like to work with them. So where Truckin is playing is actually taking all this highly fragmented and disorganized supply and enable them to work legitimately with these companies, whereas in the middle institutionalizing and professionalizing this whole supply, right? And I think that's the value add for the customer.

Yeah, clearly, JD, I think what makes you different is that you do have that physical offering, which kind of makes you different against the other technology players. And again, I just cannot stop thinking about those companies from India, which are super well-funded. Are you worried about those big players who could actually enter with their— I mean, we're talking about companies who raise hundreds of millions of dollars coming from India. Could they tomorrow come to the Middle East and give you trouble?

Look, again, I look at it from 2 different points of view. One, it's a very, very large market where it's not a winner-take-all market. There are good— okay, who thinks that they will be the only one whose only trucks will be moving on the land? I think that's a very, you know, impractical way to look at it. And secondly, I choose to focus more on my customers than on my competition and what can happen because that is beyond my control.

Okay.

Who will raise what and how they will enter here and where they will go, I have zero control on that. What I have my control in is what I am building and what we are focusing. As long as we have customers giving us the business, requiring our business, requiring us to do the business, I think we will stay in the business no matter what amount of capital anyone else brings into this. So as long as Truckin has good customers and it keeps on evolving, I'm sure we will have our own journey.

How many team you have, Jonathan, actually as a team, the employee strength as well as—

We are close to approximately 100 team members, Chandan, now spread between different geographies that we have.

Actually, when you started the business, did you actually bootstrap yourself? You know, because you're coming from the banking world. Or did you have to raise capital right away? What is your current funding stage right now with Trucking?

So we definitely bootstrapped in the beginning when I started, but very soon we brought in someone at the post-seed level. And then subsequently, as the business grew over the years, we have brought in selectively the partners into the business. We did a Series A round of fundraising last year. We are very conscious of the amount of capital that we want to raise. We like to run lean and very tight operations. Obviously 2021, the COVID hangover kind of helped everyone to tighten up the belt even further. So we always look to bring in selectively great partners who would be part of this journey in the long run. And yeah, that's where we are.

Are you currently raising another round?

As I said, we are always in talks with very much interested parties and like to bring them at different levels of the business, at different journeys, different lifecycle of the company. And we are always in talks with several interested parties at any given point.

What is the biggest challenge, Janardhan, and how do you think— are you still burning midnight oil?

I think the midnight oil burning, I think, just keeps on increasing, and especially in my case, because I guess I started with investment banking, which used to be 17-18 hours a day. And I guess so, so in hindsight, maybe that prepared me as well. for the very long and tedious hours. The biggest challenge I believe is building the right team, you know, having people who believe in your vision and being on that train with you, which goes through various bumps and crashes and ups and downs. is really hard. You as a founder, you always hire people believing that they will, they are good, they are great. But I think over a period of time, not everyone, you also learn to realize that not everyone shares the same kind of passion and drive that keeps you going. And when I speak about passion, I think again, that's a cliché word where People think that passion means being super excited, going to the office, something which you love. It's not about something which you love. It's about something— it's about getting up when you are down. It's about falling and getting it up, right? So there are a lot of days when you are significant, you go through a significant number of lows, but yet you have to self-motivate yourself.

True.

And that's probably not possible for a lot of other folks who are in the journey with you. So I think finding the right set of talented people, ensuring that they see and understand the long-term vision. And, you know, and I really like this quote about— quote which comes from Jack Ma, where he says that, you know, there is a light at the end of the tunnel the day after tomorrow. And a lot of people, you know, leave tomorrow evening. So, and that's a very, very fair state of, I think, mind, which a lot of people go through, that it just, you know, and I always like to say this to my team, that everyone wants to go to heaven and no one wants to die. So we all want to build a very large enterprise, successful, sustainable, and a great But to get there, we have to go through the brunt of building it. And I think that's, I think that's one of the biggest challenges, I would say.

How do you see the solution evolving over the next 5 years? What's your roadmap? What's your exit strategy, JD? 5 years, 10 years from now?

So I think 5 to 10 years from now, Truckin would be We would want Truckin to be one of the leading movers of goods in the region and beyond, which means where we have to look at integrated logistics solutioning, not only land transport, but there could be opportunities in other places potentially. Could that be absolutely penetrating further into the markets that we operate, which is currently Saudi, UAE, Pakistan, servicing the broader region, and, and very soon be able to be present beyond these countries as well. So in the next 5 to 7 years, I would see Truckin as a very large logistic company, techno-logistic company providing services to, you know, significant number of corporates moving significant volume of goods Do you have any advice on a new founder or could you give us some tips or how do you think you'll be able to give us some guidance from your angle actually? I think that if I were to just, I mean, rather than advise, I would say some of the takeaways from my own experience. I'm not sure if I'm right. person to give them the advice. But I think getting it started, not initially from the founder perspective when you're building something, not mulling over perfecting the product before launching, because as a— I mean, I was the first-time founder and I definitely made that mistake that I spent a lot of time that, oh, everything has to work perfectly well, perfectly well before I launch, and that delayed the— the actual start of the business. And once you start, you get slapped on your face and you realize, oh shit, and then you go and read and then you understand what was the importance of MVP, why there is a wisdom on MVP. I think that is important. Second, as a founder, I would also think that, are you ready for the real— that drive? I mean, it's hard to say from the beginning that are you going to be driven? You might be driven for the next 3 months. Would you be driven for the next 5 years? That's the question. You know, startups are very much like driving a car in the dark with only 100 meters of light. But when you drive the car, you believe that the road will unfold. But if you were to start and if you see that there is no road or there's a 10,000-kilometer journey, you probably will never start. So you have to keep on going. And if you have to have that grit, which means when you start something, you— it should be that business should be your only option. If you always have in your back of mind that, okay, if this fails and I have this backup and I will go and do this or I'll do that, most certainly it will not work because no business is a walk in the park or a Disneyland. There will be thousands of challenges which will come. And it's at that point in time what keeps you going. Some— to some people it's the necessity. And some people is the drive. But if anyone has a very solid backup option, then you pretty much will be willing to get off that roller coaster and, you know, take a nice comfortable seat somewhere else. And I think for me, I would be very, you know, conscious about that in terms of what— why are you doing this? Is it just because there are a lot of people you will come across that, oh, I want to leave my job and I want to do something. the reason why I'm doing it. I think that I'm not sure whether that is the right way to approach. It should be— it should not be because I don't like one thing, that's why I'm trying to do the other thing. It should be an opportunity which you believe in, which you're ready to roll up your sleeves. Obviously, you know, the right kind of family support system definitely helps as well, because it does take a toll on all kinds of things, personal life. So to say there could be a personal balanced life while you're building a business, I think that is also probably not possible. And that's why you need the right support system to ensure that, you know, you are ready to go through that. So I would just say, you know, don't think too much about, you know, perfecting the product, rather get into the business because once you get into the business, you would learn a lot more that what your consumers want rather than what you want to sell. So significant importance of MVP. Be very careful of the team members you choose. I think that's probably the most important part of any buildup. Teams build great businesses, teams break great businesses.

Yeah.

Tough times will always come no matter what. Everyone wants to be an overnight success, but every overnight success takes probably years and years of hard work. So just, you know, those snippets I would say.

All good advice, JD. Okay, let me finish up with some quickfire questions for you. And you can just pick your answer. Cats or dogs?

Sorry?

Cats or dogs?

Dogs.

Window or aisle?

Window.

Your favorite action movie?

I wouldn't know if you would call it action movie, but Iron Man is something which I really like. I mean—

Okay. What's your favorite sandwich?

Panini in New York. Vegetarian panini. Okay.

What's your most used app on your phone?

Outlook.

What's your favorite— okay, what's your favorite tool to build your company right now?

Favorite tool to?

To build your favorite software tool to actually build your company.

Zoom.

Describe the rest of your life in 5 words. Maximum 5 words, it could be 3.

This one is a tough one. Looking back, I mean, it has to be a bit more than 5 words. I wouldn't be able to articulate in 5 words. Essentially what I mean to say, and I think maybe later on I can put it in 5 words, is I want to look back and be fulfilled about building something which has tremendously transformed lives of all our stakeholders, whether it's shareholders, truck drivers, transporters, or our employees. So I'm not sure, I'm not that smart enough to articulate in 5 words, but if you can give me those 5 words, I would use that as well in the future.

That would be good enough.

All right, thank you very much. Fulfilled and happy life, maybe.

Okay, that's— yeah, that's better. Okay, that's a good way to summarize the thing. Thank you very much, Janan, for, you know, for joining us today for this quick interview. I want to thank everybody for listening. Again, our guest today was Canadan Damia, who is the CEO and founder of Trucking. Thank you guys, and we'll see you next time.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Canadan.

Thank you.

Okay, all good. Thanks, JD.

Thank you guys. Hopefully that was of some value.

It was good. It was interesting.

It is. It is. I just wanted to ask you one more question. Actually, it's offbeat. Do you still believe in rapid scale-up or scale-up with overheads in mind?

No, look, I don't believe in rapid—