BlackBuck: The Journey of the Country's Largest Trucking Platform

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Embarking on the journey of trucking, whether you're grappling with governance, digitization, or the intricate matchmaking of shippers and truckers, can present a myriad of challenges. The complexities of price discovery and the nuances surrounding insurance, financial services, and overall industry infrastructure can be daunting for newcomers. Enter BlackBuck, a visionary solution founded to serve as the compass in this dynamic landscape. As we explore the industry context, introduce BlackBuck, and set the tone for this article, we uncover how this innovative platform is revolutionizing the trucking sector with its comprehensive and streamlined approach.

BlackBuck, the tech startup, came into existence on April 20, 2015. Zinka Logistics, the parent organization of BlackBuck recently launched its IPO on 13th November 2024.

In this article, let's explore the world of BlackBuck startup story, its founders, business model, revenue model, IPO, funding, growth, and more.

BlackBuck - Company Highlights

BlackBuck - About

BlackBuck - About
BlackBuck - Industry
BlackBuck - Founders And Team
BlackBuck - Startup Story
BlackBuck - Mission and Vision
BlackBuck - Name, Tagline, and Logo
BlackBuck - Business Model
BlackBuck - Revenue Model
BlackBuck - Challenges Faced
BlackBuck - Funding And Investors
BlackBuck - Shareholding
BlackBuck - Growth
BlackBuck - Financials
BlackBuck - IPO
BlackBuck - Advertisements and Social Media Campaigns
BlackBuck - Competitors
BlackBuck - Future Plans

BlackBuck - About

BlackBuck is India's largest trucking system, which is redefining the logistics ecosystem of India. It provides shippers and truckers quick and easy availability, transparent pricing, efficiency, and trustworthiness and thereby, brings in a seamless experience with Data Science at its core. Besides, the company uses technology to match a shipper with a trucker and facilitate price discovery. BlackBuck promises the essentials and believes in building future-ready products for their clients.

The company has simplified trucking since 2015. BlackBuck has boasted of having 15,000+ clients as of December 8, 2023.

BlackBuck Company Products

BlackBuck aims to build 'must have' and 'future ready' products to meet the demand of the age. The company offers its products and services with data science at its core. BlackBuck company focuses both on driving consumer changes and working with analytics and machine learning. The BlackBuck company products, which are instantly available, fairly priced, and offer a seamless experience help create infinite value and deliver measurable results for shippers and the operators of the fleet.

BlackBuck company serves both shippers and fleet operators with products and services designed for both.

BlackBuck Products and Services for Shippers:

BlackBuck Products and Services for Fleet Operators:

BlackBuck - Industry

In 2024, truck sales in India are expected to reach 345.7k units. The market is predicted to grow at an annual rate of 2.59% from 2024 to 2030, with sales projected to reach 403k units by 2030.

According to a report from Mordor Intelligence, projections show a spectacular rise, reaching 484.43 billion USD by 2029, representing a strong compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.04% throughout the predicted period from 2023 to 2029. This notable upturn highlights the freight and logistics sector in India's dynamic and innovative nature, offering both stakeholders and industry players exciting prospects and challenges.

BlackBuck - Founders And Team

Rajesh Yabaji, Chanakya Hridaya and Ramasubramaniam B are the founders of the company BlackBuck.

Rajesh Yabaji

Rajesh Yabaji is the co-founder and CEO of the company. He pursued his education at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, from where he got his dual degree. He worked as the Category Development Manager commonly known as the Business Manager in ITC Limited for around 5 years. He was also a 3 months intern from May 2009 to July 2009 at Schindler India Pvt. Ltd. after being a summer intern for two more companies: the University of Nebraska Lincoln, USA, and Rio Tinto Alcan.

Chanakya Hridaya

Chanakya Hridaya is the co-founder of BlackBuck. He also completed his Bachelor's as well as his Master's degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in mechanical and manufacturing engineering, respectively. Hridaya served previously as the Assistant Manager of Supply Chain at ITC before co-founding BlackBuck. Before that, Chanakya has been an Intern at ITC and a Visiting Researcher at the University of Strathclyde.

Ramasubramaniam B

Ramasubramaniam B is also one of the founders of BlackBuck. He is the Product Manager at BlackBuck, who has earlier been the Director at Miebach Consulting. Ramasubramaniam pursued his education from IILM.

BlackBuck has an incredible team of smart engineers, business developers, energetic leaders, creative designers, and other aspirational individuals.

BlackBuck - Startup Story

Co-founder Rajesh Yabaji came up with the concept for BlackBuck company while he was employed at ITC. His regular trips to roads and toll plazas to hire trucks for affordable load transportation paralleled the growing patterns of Indian cab aggregators such as Ola and Uber. In the end, this idea gave rise to BlackBuck, which transformed the freight sector by offering a cutting-edge and effective platform for trucking logistics.

Yabaji recounts in a Forbes interview that he decided to establish BlackBuck with an aim to solve "the problem of corporate big boys such as Coca-Cola, HUL, and PepsiCo."

After founding the company in April 2015 with Chanakya Hridaya and Ramasubramaniam B, BlackBuck logistics company raised its seed capital of $5 Million in April itself. Rajesh Yabaji earlier said in an interview that his company was "unicorn by heart and not yet by number", before it actually turned a unicorn in July 2021.

He moved forward towards his goal, stating earlier that "until then, they were unorganized." This was primarily due to the influx of trucks from rural areas. At that time, BlackBuck had 1.2 million+ trucks and around 700,000+ truckers under its wing.

Blackbuck is almost like Ola and Uber for trucks. The founder says that he is investing in a few areas from the very beginning to get supply online, to comprehend the technology, and to transact online which is the biggest problem to solve for them as per news report of July 2021. So, which is why they have created the "BlackBuck App (previously boss)" to simplify things.

BlackBuck - Mission and Vision

"It is our mission to make trucking simple, intuitive and efficient through cutting-edge technology", said the Founder and CEO of BlackBuck once in an interview.

The vision of BlackBuck is "to reinvent the freight-booking logistics sector, with a focus on uplifting the truck driver in the process."

BlackBuck - Name, Tagline, and Logo

The company marks the beginning of a new path.

BlackBuck - Business Model

BlackBuck follows business-to-business (B2B) as well as business-to-consumer (B2C) models. The company charges its customers a fixed rate for their contract business. In their demand model, they charge both their customers and truck owners a commission totally depending on the freight value.

They say that their company has each and everything that takes to win a truck race smoothly. The founders got great help from their bachelor's degree and they realized that there could be a larger play of trucks in the industry for technology to come in.

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BlackBuck - Revenue Model

BlackBuck generates over 93% of its revenues from contract trucking services. It also provides telematics services of live tracking of all the trucks to the clients, which monitors their shipment all through.

BlackBuck also has a tie-up with the petroleum products marketers and banks for which it acts as an agent. It takes care of the distribution and management of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and collects a commission for the same. These ancillary services brings in the remaining portion of the operating revenue.

The company earns about 15-20% commission for providing business to the trucks it hires. It has got properly listed truck services listed on its platform, and its job is to match the truck intelligently along with the customers, totally which depends on the customer's requirements. Logistics is the soul of every invention.

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BlackBuck - Challenges Faced

Since BlackBuck logostics company is a pure-play aggregator in the trucking industry, it might be challenging to match trucks with appropriate orders; up to 80% of orders come from its predominately SME customer. The various vehicle types and tonnage capacities make it difficult to maximize coordination between truckers and shippers in order to maximize efficiency.

“The problem faced by product and engineering is that trucking has multiplied variables to it. For example, there are different types of trucks that can carry different tonnage. There is also complexity on the home-base of the trucker which needs to be matched. Also, to minimise the dry run for truckers, we have to match the right type of goods which will not perish within the time taken for transportation,” said BlackBuck founder Chanakya Hridaya.

In addition to complexity, payment dynamics present a significant challenge in the transportation aggregation space. Bigger corporations cause a mismatch with the truckers' demand for upfront payments for their services because they settle debts only once every thirty to forty-five days.

BlackBuck - Funding And Investors

BlackBuck has raised a total of $364 million in funding over the nine funding rounds that it has seen.

Below are the funding details for BlackBuck:

BlackBuck - Shareholding

Here is the BlackBuck shareholding pattern as of August 2024:

BlackBuck - Growth

Known as India's largest trucking platform, BlackBuck takes pride in the service they provide. As of FY24, the platform had 963,345 transacting truck operators. The fleet owners in this company were able to reduce idle time by 45% directing towards an increase in earnings between 20% and 30% as per news report of 2019. BlackBuck is currently a unicorn trucking service provider, which raised $67 million to enter the coveted club of unicorn companies in India in July 2021. BlackBuck also boasts of having 700K truckers and 1.2 million trucks on its platform, with over 15 million monthly transactions in 2024.

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BlackBuck - Financials

Blackbuck’s financial performance has seen fluctuations over the last few years, with revenue rebounding in FY24 but overall profitability challenges continuing.

Blackbuck Revenue

Revenue increased from INR 195.1 crore in FY23 to INR 316.5 crore in FY24, reflecting a strong 62% growth. However, revenue remains significantly lower than previous highs in FY22 and FY20.

Blackbuck Profit/Loss:

Blackbuck reduced its loss from INR 236.8 crore in FY23 to INR 167 crore in FY24, showing an improvement in financial stability but still operating at a loss.

Blackbuck Expenses:

Total expenses increased by 12% from INR 431.8 Cr in FY23 to INR 483.4 Cr in FY24, primarily due to rising employee costs.

Quick Summary:

• Revenue Growth: Increased by 62% in FY24 compared to FY23.
• Loss Reduction: Net loss decreased from INR 236.8 Cr in FY23 to INR 167 Cr in FY24.
• Rising Expenses: Overall expenses increased due to higher employee costs.
• Business Implication: While revenue recovery is promising, Blackbuck still needs to control costs to achieve profitability.

BlackBuck - IPO

The Zinka Logistics (parent company of BlackBuck) IPO opened on November 13, 2024, and will close on November 18. The price of each share is between INR 259 and INR 273 for INR 1114.7 crore IPO. The company is raising INR 550 crore through a fresh issue of shares. As of November 14, the Zinka Logistics IPO had received 1.80 times more applications than the number of shares available, according to NSE data.

Currently, the grey market premium (GMP) for the BlackBuck IPO is zero, as the company’s unlisted shares are not changing in price, according to sources tracking the grey market.

BlackBuck - Advertisements and Social Media Campaigns

Tarakki ka Naya Tareeka

Starring alongside the well-known actor Pankaj Tripathi, Blackbuck debuted its first ad film. The commercial, which promotes Blackbuck's services and displays Tripathi's adaptable talent, signifies noteworthy cooperation. Blackbuck hopes to strengthen its brand recognition with this engaging campaign.

BlackBuck - Competitors

The top competitors of the company are:

• Xpressbees
• Rivigo
• Delhivery
• ElasticRun
• Blowhorn

BlackBuck - Future Plans

The goal of the company is to deploy cash to onboard new trucking partners, expand to new transportation corridors, and invest heavily in product buying and data science capabilities. Company is also paying attention to digital growth solutions.

FAQs

What is BlackBuck company?

BlackBuck is India's largest trucking service provider, which is currently a unicorn. Founded in 2015 by Rajesh Yabaji, Chanakya Hridaya, and Ramasubramaniam B, BlackBuck aims to make trucking simple for every shipper and trucker.

What does BlackBuck company do?

BlackBuck uses technology to match a shipper with a trucker and facilitates price discovery. It also enables infrastructure around trucking including payments, insurance, financial services.

Who are BlackBuck founders?

Ramasubramaniam B, Rajesh Yabaji, and Chanakya Hridaya are the founders of BlackBuck company.

What is BlackBuck business model?

The company charges its customers a fixed rate for their contract business. In their demand model, they charge both their customers and truck owners a commission totally depending on the freight value. They say that their company has each and everything that takes to win a truck race smoothly.

What is the BlackBuck funding?

BlackBuck funding stands at $364 Million.

What are the main BlackBuck company products?

BlackBuck provides products and services both for the shippers and the fleet operators.

What is BlackBuck net worth?

BlackBuck was last valued at INR 4818 crore in 2024.