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LogiNext Mile

LogiNext Mile : Making that Last-Mile Delivery a Priority

Advanced technologies have made things much simpler and possible for people all around the world. A few years back, inclusion of technology in the traditional logistics and supply chain industry seemed difficult. While big brands were focusing on the last mile delivery system, several logistics companies were working in the backend to make it possible.

In our search of the World’s Best Logistic Companies To Watch 2022, we came across LogiNext Mile, a premier route planning and package movement optimization software for delivery service companies in the courier, parcel, and express industry.

In the following interview, Dhruvil Sanghvi, the Co-founder and CEO gives us insights into the logistics and supply chain industry, the challenges that the LogiNext team faced, and his vision for the company’s future.

How did your company come into existence? What was the idea behind its genesis?

It all started at Carnegie Mellon University where LogiNext co-founders Dhruvil Sanghvi and Manisha Raisinghani met while researching the implications of data science in logistics management.

Post this, they went to work with the likes of IBM and Deloitte where they helped Fortune 500 companies to automate and optimize logistics operations. Looking at the gaps in the transportation and logistics systems from their experience, the idea for LogiNext was born.

Brief us about the overall operations of LogiNext.

LogiNext is a global technology company that has LogiNext Mile Transportation Automation Platform as its flagship SaaS offering. The platform helps any enterprise which is moving goods and parcels from one part of the world to another or within the same city as well. Be it B2B fulfilment or last-mile deliveries, LogiNext is used by companies in the following industries:

  • Courier, Express and ParcelLogistic-Companies-March22-Profiles
  • eCommerce and Retail
  • Transportation and 3PL
  • QSR (Quick Service Restaurants) and Fast Casuals

The company is headquartered in New York with offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Jakarta and Dubai. The total team strength is 200+ and the company has raised $50 million in three rounds of funding from the likes of Tiger Global, Steadview Capital, and Alibaba Group of Companies.

Kindly elaborate on LogiNext’s unique products or services.

Let me begin with an example, consider a QSR chain like Starbucks or Mcdonald’s. There are thousands of orders coming in every day and there are multiple stores in one city/location. And there are drivers/delivery partners delivering the orders that come in last mile delivery orchestration. Before a product like LogiNext, all this was managed manually.

Now, this entire process from taking in orders from web, mobile, phone calls, etc. and bringing it into a single system and then using route optimization and route planning algorithms, these orders are assigned to drivers as trip plans, which can be changed dynamically in real-time, in case there is a change in order.

There is a LogiNext Dashboard for the store manager to automate all of this and a drivers app for the driver to go and make deliveries in the most efficient manner. The brand can control its delivery experience as the branding is theirs. All of this is made possible via the LogiNext Mile Platform.

Dhruvlil, please talk in detail about yourself. Kindly elaborate on your professional and personal life.

Looking back, it has been an incredible journey, right from growing up in Ahmedabad, a small city in the western part of India to studying data sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and working at the exhilarating Times Square to starting up and scaling a global tech firm. Life has been a roller coaster and I’ve loved every bit of it!

To dive deeper into the backstory that led me to this career path, I’d go back to 2009-10 when some major disruptions were happening- the iPhone was becoming mainstream across the globe, which meant mobility was becoming a key part of everything.

2011 is when the cloud had picked up with Amazon crossing $1 billion in revenues and Google Maps brought in the mapping revolution by making it super consumerfriendly. With eCommerce picking up steam and Uberization of everything just around the corner, I was sitting at the intersection of all these trends working with the likes of E&Y and Deloitte with logistics tech as a sector focus.

All these incredibly important developments in the global landscape led me and my co-founder, Manisha Raisinghani (who I met at CMU) to start up LogiNext to bring in a new age SaaS product to automate the world of logistics. We started from India but quickly realized the potential of the solution we were building and thus, shifted base to NY and we’re extremely proud to share that we work with 200+ enterprise clients in more than 50 countries now with a team strength of close to 250.

What makes LogiNext stand out from its competition?

One of the USPs of LogiNext is the ease of usability and its compatibility with other technology systems. LogiNext platform comes with APIs and Webhooks which talk to a lot of systems and make it easy for any organization to go live in a matter of minutes. This was possible because of being hosted on the cloud and the amount of effort that has already gone into building the integrations.

Earlier, deploying a software like LogiNext would have to be done on-premise and it would take months to execute, but with LogiNext’s SaaS offering, all this is accomplished on the go and at a fraction of the cost.

What kind of challenges has LogiNext faced in its initial days of establishment and what are the struggles it is going through now?

When we began, most of the logistics management software used to be legacy on-premise software. What this means is that the software was very expensive and would take months to implement!

Cloud technology changed all of this. And LogiNext is a cloud-based SaaS platform that is much more cost-effective than any on-premise software and is plug&play. Now, one of the challenges earlier on was to educate the enterprises about this.

Fortune 500 companies have been running on legacy software for decades and to communicate that the cloud software is equally secure (if not more) was a huge paradigm shift that was to be brought about.

This has now changed, especially in the last couple of years with SaaS becoming an accepted model and a lot of traditional tech companies also adopting the cloud and moving on from their on-premise model.

Kindly describe the current industry scenario that LogiNext is catering to.

Logistics and supply chain is probably one of the last industries to undergo the technology wave. LogiNext is one of the pioneers in the field of route optimization, fleet management and building the next generation of a transportation management system.

The industry has seen billions of dollars being poured in as investment and the scene is really seeing a lot of action. Especially after the pandemic, on-demand deliveries has made the last mile home delivery a priority for every brand and this is what we do the best.

What advice would you like to give the young entrepreneurs and start-ups that are willing to enter the logistics and supply chain industry that you are catering to?

The logistics and supply chain industry is the backbone of the global economy. It requires a lot of industry insights and a long-term commitment to succeed in this industry. My advice to anyone willing to startup in the domain would be to spend a few years on the ground getting to know the real pain points of the customer and where the gaps lie. This time on the field goes a long way in anticipating real-world problems and coming up with a better business proposition that stands the test of time.

What does the future hold for LogiNext in terms of growth?

We’ve been growing 100% and are working to keep up the momentum. We’ve signed up with some major clients (press)and in all work with 200+ enterprise clients across 50+ countries. We are hiring rapidly across geographies and would probably double in team size in 2022.

We have a very diverse team as well with a woman CTO leading from the helm (my co-founder Manisha Raisinghani). We have several other women in leadership roles and a team with different backgrounds and inclinations which all makes for an open, growing organization.