Rivigo, a homegrown logistics start-up that owns as well as acts as an aggregator of trucks, is tying up with YES Bank, IDFC and 10 other financial institutions to make cheaper funds available to truck owners and operators on its platform.

The funds will be available at an interest rate of 1-2 per cent per month, lower than the usual industry standard of 2-3 per cent, said Deepak Garg, Rivigo’s founder and CEO. Instead of waiting for funds from their customers, they can get the money from the banks for a duration of 30-60 days, he explained.

The start-up aims to disrupt India’s truck market which, according to a 2015 government estimate, comprises over 9 million trucks and is largely unorganised. Over 85 per cent of truck owners own a fleet of five trucks or less.

Rivigo itself owns 5,000 trucks, and has tied up with 30,000 more truck operators. In total, it has access to 1 lakh trucks of various sizes, with each truck owner or operator on its platform running 2-5 trucks each.

Like cab aggregators such as Uber, Rivigo has a bunch of company-owned trucks and those owned and/or operated by its partners. But unlike them, Rivigo allows fleet owners to be part of its ecosystem. It does not provide a minimum guarantee of cargo volume to its driver partners on its platform, but offers benefits like tracking daily rates for all types of trucks between various destinations.

The company also has a freight rate exchange — like commodity exchange — which helps truckers define on a daily basis the trucking rates between 300 cities, including intra- to inter-city movements.

By being on the organised platform of Rivigo, truckers can also access fuel discounts. It has firms like Blue Dart, Safe Express and Gati as its customers, with each of which it has a one-year contract for business.

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