A ‘Cleartrip’ of goods movement: Vamaship offers logistics aggregation

Vamaship, a few-months-old company in the business of logistics, is aggregating customer demand for cargo movement and connecting them with service providers.

Bhavik Chinai, the company’s CEO, told BusinessLine that Vamaship allows customers to compare freight rates offered by service providers in different modes — such as ship, air and surface transportation — on its platform.

Its customers discover 5-70 per cent cheaper freight rates by using its platform than what they can discover in the normal course, he added.

Its customer list includes Ashapura Minechem, a company in the bauxite mining space, Vanitycase, a contract manufacturing firm, SMEs, small e-commerce firms and several individuals who sell products using social media.

Many individuals who display and sell products on Instagram and Facebook look for logistics options for delivery. They do not have enough volumes daily to get “wholesale rates” from a courier company. This is where Vamaship helps.

Service providers on its list could be courier firms such as Aramex, Blue Dart, DHL and Fedex, and shipping firms, among others. Chinai, however, did not disclose the number of service providers that already exist on the platform.

To be on the Vamaship platform, the service providers need to offer a basic level of services, such as order tracking. “We are like the Cleartrip in goods transportation, providing customers options and prices of moving goods between two points,” said Chinai.

He says the company is able to get cheaper rates by aggregating volumes, as also by cutting short the time taken for logistics firms to get paid their dues from customers.

“Usually, customers pay their logistics service providers after a gap of 30-120 days. But, customers are willing to pay upfront if they get a good discount on freight rates,” Chinai said.

The company, which has raised undisclosed seed funding from Chinai’s family-backed firm BVC Ventures, is looking to raise its next round of funding in April. “I started this business as I hail from a logistics family and was aware of the gaps that exist,” Chinai said.

The customers of Vamaship have not been “poached” from his family-owned logistics firm, which focuses on precious cargo logistics.