Sitics Acquires Majority Stake In Logistics Startup Quifers
Sitics's operational excellence with Quifers technology stack would provide tremendous value addition to the customers of both the companies by bringing in greater transparency, control, and cost-efficiency
Photo Credit : Shutterstock,
Third-party logistics (3PL) company Sitics Logistic on Monday said it has acquired a majority stake in tech-enabled logistics startup Quifers to tap opportunities amid the supply chain boom and enhance combined revenue by up to 20 per cent. The company, however, did not disclose the sum involved in the deal. Sitics said it is also planning to take the Quifers platform to Singapore, Malaysia, UAE, Thailand, Australia, and the EU with its global presence. This acquisition would put Sitics up the value chain in the global 3PL market. It will transit from a “solution-based service provider” to a “technology-based service provider”, the company said. Besides, Sitics's operational excellence with Quifers technology stack would provide tremendous value addition to the customers of both the companies by bringing in greater transparency, control, and cost-efficiency, it added. “Sitics goal to digital transformation will get a boost with this acquisition. We see tremendous advantages for our clients by increasing efficiency and reducing costs by using the Quifers platform. Our fulfilment capabilities and Quifers's tech capability would act as a force multiplier for the customers,” Sitics founder and CEO Sikander AM said. The combination would unlock tremendous cross-selling and upselling opportunities for both the companies as the combined entity would able to offer a comprehensive package, which includes fulfilment and the technology, the company said in a statement. The deal is expected to increase the combined entity's revenue by at least 20 per cent, the statement said, adding both the entities target manufacturers, distribution companies, and e-commerce firms of various scales, it said. “With Quifers, we will be able to provide a comprehensive package, which includes solutions and the technology, which will add a greater degree of control and cost optimisation to the whole supply chain process,” Haridas T, Co-founder and COO, Sitics Logistic Solutions, said. Also, there is a good overlap between the target customers of Sitics and Quifers. Both these companies target manufacturers, distribution companies, and E.com companies of various scale. Hence, there can be a unified and efficient sales process, he added. “We have been building Quifers with a vision to become a go-to player for any customer for all of their logistics needs. Up till now, we have solved one end of the problem with our product-related approach. “With Sitics integrating Quifers product with its operational capability, achieving our vision for Quifers becomes much more accelerated,” Amit Mishra – founder and CEO, Quifers, said. (PTI)

Sitics Acquires Majority Stake In Logistics Startup Quifers

Third-party logistics (3PL) company Sitics Logistic on Monday said it has acquired a majority stake in tech-enabled logistics startup Quifers to tap opportunities amid the supply chain boom and enhance combined revenue by up to 20 percent.Our fulfilment capabilities and Quifers's tech capability would act as a force multiplier for the customers, Sitics founder and CEO Sikander AM said.Also, there is a good overlap between the target customers of Sitics and Quifers.Both these companies target manufacturers, distribution companies, and E.com companies of various scale.With Sitics integrating Quifers product with its operational capability, achieving our vision for Quifers becomes much more accelerated, Amit Mishra founder and CEO, Quifers, said. Disclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated & summarized by a computer program and has not been created by StartupAround.

Sitics acquires majority stake in logistics startup Quifers

Sitics said it is also planning to take the Quifers platform to Singapore, Malaysia, UAE, Thailand, Australia, and the EU with its global presence.

06/28/2017
This column is authored by Sanjay Bansal  – Founder and MD at  Aurum Equity Partners LLP
The Indian logistics industry comprising road, rail, air and water is currently estimated to be worth $130 billion and is expected to reach $300 billion by 2020. However, it is the road transportation, which dominates the mix as it carries around 65% of freight traffic as compared to rail, water and air, which account for 32%, 7% and 1% respectively. The road network of India, which is the second largest in the world, moves 7 million goods vehicles worth 1,325 billion ton-km. Looking at these figures, it isn’t a rocket science to understand that trucks are in heavy demand. Trucks have evident advantages over other networks, especially rails:
They can deliver cargo to mountainous, rural and other remote areas which remain inaccessible through rail network. There is considerable time saving in loading and unloading as trucks provide doorstep delivery. It also results in cost saving associated with transporting the goods from railway station to the warehouse. Trucks are available in various sizes and capacities according to the purpose of use (for example, tippers, haulage, trailers, two and three-axle rigid trucks), which makes it convenient for the companies to transport their goods in the quantity they require. So, undoubtedly, the trucking industry in India has gained immense importance in the movement of goods over the last few years. The Operational Structure
Trucking is largely unorganized and fragmented industry, mainly owing to its operational model and multiple players. The users (also called manufacturers/shippers) rely heavily on middlemen such as trucking companies and brokers/agents to source the trucks, complete the paperwork, and manage the delivery schedules. Apart from these core tasks, these middlemen are also indirectly responsible for support functions such as financing & insurance, maintenance & repair, and co-ordination with government/regulatory bodies. Image Source
Contract Vs Spot Pricing
The trucking industry deploys two types of pricing strategies – contract and spot. The former is a quote that is a pre-determined amount agreed upon to be with the shipper for certain duration, usually a year. A few shippers prefer spot rates as the freight rates fall or rise, according to the demand and load-to-truck ratio. If the demand is low, truck capacity will not be overloaded, resulting in lower prices. A contractual quote ensures that there are no price surprises and consignment loading can start without any price negotiations. Shippers with sensitive freight needs usually go for this one. The only drawback is that when prices are low, the shipper might be bound to pay higher if the contract says so. In case of spot quotes, the shipper may have to spend several hours bargaining, by the end of which the negotiation may fall through and the shipment gets delayed. A majority of price negotiations in the trucking industry happens in the spot market. So, it is prone to corruption and lack of transparency. The shippers end up shelling out a huge amount as brokerage fee as well as bribe to the middlemen to get timely loading slots and maintain the delivery schedule on track. Spot market also feeds inefficiency because most transactions happen via phone calls and personal relationships. There is no digital and regulatory marketplace which can foster fair and transparent pricing. Driver Dilemma
The drivers are the backbone of the entire trucking industry. If they don’t report to work on time, are on leave, go on a strike the entire logistics can go haywire for that period of time. Lax behaviour and irresponsible driving (speeding or under influence of alcohol) are other major concerns associated with the truck drivers. If they don’t drive proficiently and safely, an accident may happen, having devastating consequences on their own life as well as the property – trucks and goods being carried therein. The shippers and fleet owners do not have real-time information about the whereabouts of the truck and how far it has travelled as the trucks are not GPS enabled and drivers do not possess/are not provided handsets for communication. However, from the drivers’ seat, the scenario appears very different. Their jobs are unpredictable; the driving schedule is erratic; they don’t have adequate training on safe driving, tackling on-road regulatory hassles and vehicle breakdown/maintenance; they are compensated poorly (about Rs25,000-30,000 per month) and do not have social security benefits; and have to spend several months on the road away from the family. Tech-Driven Startups Changing the Game
Middlemen costs combined with driver woes, the operational profitability and business productivity takes a severe hit on the shippers as well as the fleet owners. But, it seems technology may be a solution to all these problems. Several startups have jumped into the sector to make transportation easier for all stakeholders and organize the operations. Startups such as Blackbuck, Shippr, LetsTransport, Rivigo, Quifers and many others aggregate a huge number of local truck operators to provide on-demand, and transparent online marketplace. The shippers can browse through the list of available trucks in the required locations and then, book a truck against the payment of a commission for every transaction or a time-bound subscription. These truck aggregators are leveraging technology to provide services such as automated demand-supply scheduling, GPS tracking, cloud based documentation, mobile/web app support, and IoT-enabled vehicle safety and maintenance.Some of them even provide trained drivers. These startups are driving efficiency in the trucking industry by eliminating the interference of middlemen. Looking at the growth potential of logistics sector and associated startups, investors are pouring in funds. In fact, PE investment in logistics has been pegged at $500 million in 2016-17. Image Source
Startups Changing the Game, But Uber Freight Set to Disrupt the Industry
The recent announcement by the ride hailing company Uber about launching Uber Freight or Uber for Trucking in the US has jolted the entire trucking industry across the world. Uber Freight is an app that matches trucking companies, independent operators and professional truck drivers with shippers for carrying loads that need to be transported from one place to another. These drivers are vetted and approved by Uber. The app lists details about the jobs and routes available, what each driver is required to haul, and how much they will be paid. As soon as the drivers agree to carry a load, they will be sent rate confirmation within seconds. The prices are guaranteed and pre-determined, usually based on distance to be covered, type of cargo and location, among a few other factors. Sounds familiar? Yes, this app works exactly like its app for cab drivers and riders. Uber is doing away with the middlemen, and replacing conventional brokerage system with an automated system, based on surge pricing model. The shippers and drivers can directly connect, get/give instant quotes, and agree upon the immediate shipment pickup without wasting hours of negotiation. Uber also ensures the drivers regarding the speed of payment, which could take several weeks to months to release. It pays them within a few days, fee-free for every single load, and even for the extra waiting hours. Essentially, Uber Freight is addressing all pain points of the trucking industry:
Meets on-demand capacity promptly for shippers
Lowers operating costs
Brings transparency in prices and processes
Improves efficiency of vehicle and fuel utilization
Pays drivers the right price and on time
Facilitates GPS-enabled freight management
Uber Freight was launched after the company acquired self-driving trucking company Otto in August 2016. Uber expects that its freight business will create a shipping and data network that could be tapped in the future when it shifts towards driverless trucks in the future. If the model takes off successfully, it is expected to spread its roots to other countries, including India. So, while logistics startups are doing a great job of organizing the sector, Uber Freight will radically change the face of the trucking industry. Nevertheless, with or without Uber Freight, the Indian trucking industry is set to ride higher on the technology wave to become better and stronger.

The Uber Freight Impact on the Trucking Industry in India

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April 24, 2016, we mark one year since we started out Quifers – a technology logistics firm that provides a comprehensive solution comprising of technology, analytics and operations for businesses to manage their logistics. We are already clocking close to Rs 1 crore in revenue per month (powering about 9,300 deliveries on daily basis), and are on our way to breaking even within a span of seven months. But trust me, nothing about this is as rosy as it sounds. We felt that we should share this adventurous journey; lest, someone is thinking of starting up or has started up with any idea, this account might help you in some way or other. Or else, it could be a good read to understand what happens when you start with an idea and are scaling up. After all, we ourselves are passionate beings who value collaborative spirit a lot. Let me start with the story about this journey. We are a bunch of techies, product freaks, and business specialists who resigned from our jobs to give an idea a try. But before that let me give you a brief about what we do. ( Read Quifers’ startup story . ) Managing operations and logistics has always been a pain and coupled with a huge wastage it’s easily something that affects a company’s bottom line. Standing at the intersection of technology, analytics and logistics, we are focusing on building products that makes it possible for businesses to manage their pickups/deliveries/distribution with convenience and competitiveness. Advertisement
Related read:  Logistics to be the game changer for e-commerce in 2016
Our smart algorithms, savvy mobile apps, and a simple dashboard help business save on resource, time and cost by efficiently planning, managing and reconciling the deliveries. Additionally, it’s creating a revolution by solving problems plaguing whole industry (like   managing returns with deliveries, maintaining address consistency for end deliveries, reducing delivery re-attempts; to name a few). We cater to businesses as big as leading e-commerce and courier delivery firms, the FMCG and Retail biggies to numerous startups who want to fully outsource their logistics to us and to conventional small businesses. Also read:  Flipkart goes beyond e-commerce: eKart to serve offline players now
However, that’s not how we started. We looked more something like this:
Yes! We started out with the concept of providing on-demand commercial vehicle to people who want to move their household goods. So how did this turn into that! Qufiers for Enterprise
Read on…
April 2015 — Being a staunch believer in lean, we designed a very simple and naive site that propelled the idea saying “Book a mini truck” on landing page and linked our emails to the order form placed on the site. We went live on April 24, 2015. Of course, a lot of planning and research was done prior to that, but this marked the starting of our journey. We then went around Hiranandani, Powai (the second cradle of startups next to Koramangala, Bengaluru ) distributing the above pamphlets to people around the area and talking to few of the drivers. May 8, we received our first order. It took us good 10 minutes to digest that yes, we actually received a real order. I remember calling up my friend to break the news (well, back then it was really a news for us). We called back the customer, arranged for a mini-truck, and had have the goods moved. After few days, one of the customer’s friend called us to book an order. That’s how we used to exhibit a customer testimonial. We next started targeting Facebook groups that were similar to “House-for-rent in Mumbai”. Though it was close to spamming but this worked, and we started getting traction of about five to six orders a week. Google sheets really came in handy to manage these orders. I think the humanity seriously owes Google a lot. With no place to stay, we were initially putting up in our ex-college (NITIE, Mumbai) unofficially and the hostel room was our workplace. But then the security did come to know about us and we were flanged out. Thankfully, we had booked a small (8×8 ft.) shop near the college in a chawl, which became our office and shelter to sleep. Related read:  In India, we don’t have garage startups. We start up in apartments and 2BHKs! By July, we were getting a decent traction. That’s when we thought of moving into the B2B space. We started barging into offices, hubs, and warehouses in the industrial areas in and around Mumbai. Talking to people sitting in those hubs exposed us to the huge gap in this space. There was hardly any level of standardisation in terms of service level or commercials, and add to it the daily headache of managing and reconciling countless number of vendors. Realising this to be a good opportunity, we extended the model to SMEs, retailers, and corporates. We also took our first step towards product by building an android-based mobile app for vehicle drivers and a back-end system to manage the incoming orders. August 2015, we saw  hiring of our first few employees to manage the increasing operations, tackling threats from local unions, deploying a minimal product to manage the incoming orders and most important of them all — converting of an enterprise client. Why was this critical? — This would later lead us to expanding our solution scope to last mile planning and operations, which would form a base to our current product. By September, we closed our seed investment round and raised a total of Rs 2 crore from IAN and Smile Group. With funding came the set of legal compliances that needed to be cleared. Interacting with the legal professionals’ day in and out and going through countless number of legal documents, you realise that you can easily qualify the legal language as your third language. The on-demand space was hot and it was this time, when we experienced the demand curve in real. We saw battle for market share warming up with players dominating different pockets of Mumbai. We kept activating different areas through our on-ground sales team and that’s what our competition did. It was quite like playing a game of chess not on a chess board, but rather on the actual streets of Mumbai. Soon, the game transcended from a market dominance to a price competition. Everybody was betting on volumes that would get generated due to lower price, which in turn would hold the economies. Gradually, the market did find an equilibrium. This is what happened
The 8×8 office suddenly started seeing our team growing, and we moved into a bigger and better (actual) office space. We started forming a kick-ass team, though it meant taking a whole load of pains to on-board right set of people (we had to go around 31 candidates to hire a single developer). Though media has done a lot to promote the startup culture in India, but apprehensions in people joining an early-stage firm was pretty evident. When a Technology Lead has to explain, “Dude! I had to first convince my wife, then my parents, then my wife’s parents for the startup and you just can’t convince your father” to a one-year experience candidate throwing tantrums on joining us, you do feel such undercurrents. Moving on, we zeroed on a technology stack and started building our product to manage the internal processes. However, the festive rush during October and November came hard on us and back then, our operations team was literally struggling to keep pace with the market demands. The office seemed more like a trading market where people were just shouting over the phones, handling the drivers that kept on increasing daily throughout the Dussehra — Diwali period. Although we had the initial system ready, the product development could hardly keep up with the increasing demand during that time. Seeing this, we realised that the current technology stack (MEAN) would take us much longer to sustain our process flow and we switched to a simpler stack, which required considerable lesser development efforts, discarding whatever we’d built. Though it was a tough decision, this came out as one of our best move to maneuver the firm. Following a big bang approach to develop a product does seem lucrative, but it has many fall backs. The development cycle should be broken into numerous sprints so that you can ship out as many functionalities as possible. This allows you to see the real-time impact of the system, helps you judge whether something would work or not, allow you to experiment and innovate on so many levels — in short, it keeps the whole system agile and lean. We followed pretty aggressive sprints and constantly involved the operations team to provide feedback over each functionality that we rolled out. By December, we were ready with a decent product around fleet management and rolled that out to our active clients and started pitching the same to new leads. However, the product didn’t hold much value for the clients. We did some soul-searching and found out following reasons:
– A person managing business doesn’t simply want one more platform to get added where he would need to check the fleets. People wanted an interactive system that would be intelligent enough to intervene around any operations hit or compliance breach. – No one wants a solution in isolation and our system back then did little talking with the live client system. – Most important of all, no one wants to change or disrupt their process flows. Since, they’ve found a way of keeping the operations going since past 20–25 years. They are too comfortable or too apprehensive of changing. When in doubt, throw yourselves out into the market. That’s what we did. We started talking to people from various sectors and started understanding the whole process flow for operations and logistics. That proved to be an eye-opener for us. Attacking a particular problem in isolation would never create a great value for you. With that, we took few step backs and started scanning up the whole value chain. Here’s the insight that we gained that gave us a leverage to move up the value chain:
We started working on these solutions. Though it required a huge change on architecture level, but keeping with the concept of lean, we came up with the updated version of our dashboard by February 2016. We started pitching to businesses and got a decent response. However, we now realised that though, we were gaining momentum. But the time to convert a lead into a repeating customer was something that we need to improve. B2B sales is a lot different than B2C sales. If we analyse the B2B sales decisions closely, we’ll find that there are more or less two reasons that people don’t buy. They don’t believe the problem they face is significant enough to take any action (if they recognise it as a problem)
They don’t believe whether the solution will work. Majority of the cases are Reason 1. Rather than a typical sales cycle of calls, meetings, follow-up meetings and more meetings; we tried something different with one of the leads we generated in March. Let’s call it “Collaborative Development”. We worked along with different teams (operations, technology, and analytics) of this lead — going through the process flows, identifying the failure modes, and coming up with an integrated solution to streamline their operations. We acted as a central force that assimilated all the resources to come up with transformation. Surprisingly, we were able to attain a deep integration in no time. Just with the fact that instead of selling our solution, we tried solving the problem side-by-side with our clients. The other thing we recognised was ‘Change’. Change is always considered painful by everyone and this serves as the major blocker in huge number of cases. Buying a new solution means going through a change process. So, what we did? We simply created modules so that our clients had to go through a minimal change process to use our solution. These methods do provide an easier way for the businesses to adopt technology. Talking about adoption of technology in operations and logistics by businesses in India, we still are looking at a very nascent market and as illustrated below, there lies a mammoth market to explore. However, the problems that plagues Indian Logistics sector are deep rooted and we are scratching only surface level problems. But, I’m sure technology would lead the way into attacking them. Anyway, back to us. It has really been a steep learning curve for us. The fact that you interact with such a diverse set of people in the form of customers, clients, team, investors, competitors, partners, vendors etc, makes this journey all the more interesting. It really presents a great opportunity where you learn from any and every one. Trust me, nothing can be more humbling yet gracefully bold than starting on an idea and scaling it up. After writing this account, if I had to summarise our journey via one image, nothing beats this one! We’ll be glad to answer/comment any queries you might have. (Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory. )
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A first-hand account of what really goes in a startup— ‘One-year journey from start to startup’

Companies offering technology-driven solutions that serve the supply chain & logistics space (e.g. shipping, inventory mgmt, last mile, trucking). 

Supply Chain & Logistics Tech

Corporate Majority

Quifers is a tech-driven logistics company focusing on the light commercial vehicle segment. From point-to-point deliveries and distributions to hourly rental services, Quifers provides wide range of logistics services to help businesses grow.

On May 10th, 2021, Sitics Logistic acquired a majority stake in Quifers. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Date	Round	Amount	Investors	Valuation Valuations are submitted by companies, mined from state filings or news, provided by VentureSource, or based on a comparables valuation model.	Revenue	Sources
5/10/2021	Corporate Majority		Sitics Logistic	$XXM	0 FY undefined	1
10/8/2015	Seed	$XXM	Subscribe to see more	$XXM	0 FY undefined	10

Date	5/10/2021	10/8/2015
Round	Corporate Majority	Seed
Amount		$XXM
Investors	Sitics Logistic	Subscribe to see more
Valuation	$XXM	$XXM
Revenue	0 FY undefined	0 FY undefined
Sources	1	10

First funding	Last Funding	Investor	Rounds	Type	Location
5/10/2021	5/10/2021	Sitics Logistic	1 Corporate Majority	Corporation	India
00/00/0000	00/00/0000	Indian Angel Network	Subscribe to see more	Angel Investor (Group)	India
00/00/0000	00/00/0000	Smile Group	Subscribe to see more	Holding Company	India

First funding	5/10/2021	00/00/0000	00/00/0000
Last Funding	5/10/2021	00/00/0000	00/00/0000
Investor	Sitics Logistic	Indian Angel Network	Smile Group
Rounds	1 Corporate Majority	Subscribe to see more	Subscribe to see more
Board Seats
Type	Corporation	Angel Investor (Group)	Holding Company
Location	India	India	India

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