Rivigo is a logistics company that provides delivery services to apparel, pharmaceutical, frozen food and automotive sectors.
Deepak had spent close to a decade at McKinsey and was deeply involved in the logistics and automotive sector. During his time there he realised that while the economy was growing, trucks were not selling in line with the growth. That is when Deepak decided to take some time off from work, and take a road trip to interact directly with truck drivers and understand the reasons behind the shortage of drivers. He realised that the truck drivers have been marginalised and looked at as outcasts, which needed to change.
When Deepak was fiddling with the idea of establishing his own startup, he met Ghazal at a coffee shop. She had just returned from the US after finishing a joint programme – an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School and was looking to create a startup. Ghazal’s husband was Deepak’s colleague. Ghazal hit the road with a view to understanding the gravity of the situation. She wanted to figure out as to why the people of a country which has a massive unemployed population were not willing to take up paid jobs as truck drivers.
The duo found out some shocking reasons as to why the profession has been looked down upon traditionally, the major one is staying on the road for days at a stretch. It is perceived to be a high-risk job because of poor living conditions, vulnerability to contracting HIV, drug, and alcohol addiction, and pressure from truck owners to drive more and faster. Gazal and Deepak knew that if they could send the driver home the same day, a lot of those problems would get automatically solved. It would solve a business challenge too. It is difficult to find capable truck drivers due to the issues listed earlier. That’s exactly what the airlines industry does. The planes keep flying through the day, the pilots and crew change each sector. On paper, this system sounds simple enough. But in practice, it is anything but easy.
Rivigo has created a network of over 70 pit stops across the country. The pit stops for the truck drivers of Rovio are located in semi-urban and rural areas. Rivigo operates its own fleet of trucks and one of the main ways it differentiates from competitors is tracking the amount of time most drivers can stay on the road before they get too tired to operate a vehicle safely. It uses those numbers to create a relay system so drivers can end their shift and hand their truck off without interrupting Rivigo’s 24-hour route operations. Each operator has a smartphone app that automatically clocks them in when they get into a truck and keeps track of their hours and mileage. Rivigo’s tech platform also includes a network of sensors that are used to monitor the temperature of refrigerated shipments, track security and location, and monitor the performance of each vehicle down to its individual parts.
