Filling The Gaps In Logistics Industry

- Reji John

Kushal Nahata, an electronic and telecommunication graduate from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar in Orissa, founded FarEye along with Gautam Kumar and Gaurav Srivastava, two of his engineering batch mates. When I met him at his office in Noida, a suburban city of Delhi just across the state line in Uttar Pradesh, on a Saturday morning in October, he told me an anecdote. He said during his school and college days, he used to be worried and anxious about the arrival of his examination admit card by post. And he would have no means to find the status of its delivery. "Even today this seems to the experience for students around the country. Unless and until you get that card, you don't know what to do," he said.

That was the thought that triggered Nahata and his friends to start FarEye in 2013. They were creating a technology solution to an urgent problem in the logistics sector for the rapidly growing eCommerce industry. While the West had Amazon making waves, the East saw Alibaba making huge investment in eCommerce market places and in eCommerce logistics infrastructure. At that time, in India, a lot of companies in eCommerce began to raise funds and offer goods for sale online at huge discounts. In the early days of eCommerce, buying a product on online marketplaces was an experience full of uncertainty. There were teething problems with all Indian eCommerce companies particularly in the last mile delivery of goods purchased online. The whole process was cumbersome, inefficient and meant loss of time and money for the company.