How Rajesh Kumar Naidu Yabaji Is Powering BlackBuck’s Tech-Driven Freight Shift

India’s highways are filled with countless stories, but few begin as quietly and unfold as dramatically as this one. The story starts with a young IIT graduate who watched a freight yard slowly grind to a halt. Trucks stood waiting with no clear direction, drivers grew frustrated as hours slipped away, and shipments moved forward at a painfully slow pace.

In that moment, he found himself asking a simple but powerful question: Why is moving goods across India so difficult?

The question refused to leave his mind. It followed him through his internship, where he managed hundreds of shipments a day and echoed through the long hours of his first corporate job. It grew louder each time he saw another broken link in the supply chain. Eventually, the question stopped being a passing thought and began to feel like a calling.

In 2015, Rajesh Kumar Naidu Yabaji made a decision that few expected. He walked away from a secure and growing career and chose to enter one of India’s most chaotic and challenging industries. And committed himself to rebuilding the trucking ecosystem from the ground up.

What followed was a journey marked by relentless grit, bold decisions, and transformative ideas. The small spark grew into BlackBuck, India’s most influential tech-driven trucking network.

This is the story of the man who looked at inefficiency, saw opportunity, and turned it into a billion-dollar revolution.

Rajesh Yabaji - Early Life and Education
Rajesh Yabaji - Career Beginnings
Rajesh Yabaji - Leadership Style
Rajesh Yabaji - Recent Statement
Rajesh Yabaji - Real-World Example

Rajesh Yabaji - Biography

Rajesh Yabaji - Early Life and Education

Rajesh Yabaji graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 2010. He earned a B.Tech in metallurgical and materials engineering and later completed an MBA, both at IIT Kharagpur. 

During his final-year internship, he “fell in love with supply chain management”. That experience, managing hundreds of daily shipments, opened his eyes to the inefficiencies in India’s freight industry, planting the seeds for his future startup. 

In college, he was also a pole-vault athlete, reflecting the energy he brings to his work.

Rajesh Yabaji - Career Beginnings

After finishing his studies, Yabaji joined ITC Limited, a major Indian conglomerate. There, he managed the supply chain for ITC’s leaf tobacco division. This role exposed him to large-scale logistics operations in India. 

In April 2015, Rajesh resigned from ITC to co-found BlackBuck along with Chanakya Hridaya and Ramasubramaniam B. BlackBuck began as an online platform matching trucking companies with shippers to eliminate “dead mileage” and reduce transport costs.

The startup quickly attracted investor interest. Within a week of its launch, BlackBuck closed a $5 million seed funding round in April 2015. By August 2015, just four months after starting, the company was already EBITDA-positive with revenue far exceeding costs. 

This rapid early success helped BlackBuck keep growing: by 2016, it had tens of thousands of trucks on the network, serving both large corporations and emerging small businesses. Yabaji steered the company through multiple funding rounds over the years. Notably, in July 2021, BlackBuck raised $67 million in a Series E round, which valued the company at $1 billion (making it one of India’s unicorn startups).

Throughout this period, Yabaji focused on solving real logistics problems. He initially targeted major clients (like Coca-Cola, Unilever, Tata, etc.), but later pivoted to serve smaller businesses too. 

By FY2025 and FY2026, BlackBuck’s revenues were growing rapidly and turning profitable; for example, in the Sept 2025 quarter, the company reported 53% year-on-year revenue growth and a INR 29.2 crore net profit (a sharp swing from losses the prior year). These achievements, from bootstrapping a seed-funded venture to leading a fast-growing listed company, highlight Yabaji’s entrepreneurial skill in scaling BlackBuck’s operations and finance.

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Rajesh Yabaji - Leadership Style

Yabaji is widely described as an energetic, hands-on leader who pushes teams to deliver results. His colleagues note his “energy and resilience” and passion for building the logistics network. The Harvard Business profile of Yabaji observes that he keeps himself involved in every area of BlackBuck’s business, from product design to finance to operations, especially during hyper-growth phases. He challenges his team to “push the bar higher” and strives to bring out the best in people.

Importantly, Yabaji emphasizes disciplined, customer-focused growth. He often uses the metaphor of building “muscle” rather than “fat”, meaning he invests only in things that create real customer value or a strong competitive advantage. For example, during the COVID pandemic, he made tough calls to shut down projects that weren’t yielding results and even waived platform fees for small and medium shippers to keep them on board. 

These moves were unpopular in the short term, but they paid off: once lockdowns eased, SMEs flooded back, and load volumes on BlackBuck began “doubling… every month”. This is a real-world outcome of his strategic focus on meaningful efficiency. 

Yabaji also stresses patience and focus, comparing his approach to playing table tennis one point at a time– rather than getting carried away by hype or aggressive scale. His leadership blends high energy with a calm, analytical mindset.

Rajesh Yabaji - Recent Statement

In September 2025, Yabaji gained attention for a candid social-media post about Bengaluru’s infrastructure. He publicly complained on the platform “X” (formerly Twitter) that BlackBuck’s nine-year stay in the city had become unsustainable. “Average commute for my colleagues shot up to 1.5+ hrs… Roads full of potholes and dust… didn’t see any of this changing in the next 5 years,” he wrote. 

He concluded bluntly that “it’s now very-very hard to continue here. We have decided to move out.” His remarks drew mixed reactions, including invitations from other states to relocate, but they underscored Yabaji’s willingness to speak out on practical issues affecting his company’s operations. This statement reflects how he prioritizes efficient logistics conditions: if road quality or commute becomes a barrier, he will publicly address it to find solutions.

Rajesh Yabaji - Real-World Example

One concrete example of Yabaji’s impact can be seen in how BlackBuck supported small businesses during the COVID-19 crisis. When the national lockdown began in 2020, many truckers went out of business, and small shippers had no trucks. Yabaji quickly pivoted BlackBuck’s strategy to help these firms. He cut non-essential projects and stopped charging fees to its SME customers. 

As a result, when the economy reopened, countless small firms used BlackBuck to arrange trucks. Yabaji reports that the platform’s freight volumes “started doubling on loads every month” once things normalized. This real-world surge in business shows how his decisions directly helped many companies keep goods moving. It also demonstrates his hands-on problem-solving: by adjusting pricing and focus, he converted a crisis into an opportunity for small businesses to recover.

Another tangible outcome is the massive growth of BlackBuck’s network. Within a few years, the platform grew from tens of thousands of trucks to hundreds of thousands nationwide. For instance, by 2019, BlackBuck had over 300,000 trucks on its network and listed major clients (Coca-Cola, Tata, etc.). 

Though BlackBuck’s back-end uses complex tech, the real-world effect is simple: shippers across India can tap BlackBuck’s app to find a reliable truck quickly, and independent truckers can get steady loads. Yabaji often notes that even something as routine as faster shipping or fewer empty runs can save businesses money and improve living standards for drivers. The platform’s adoption by major logistics players is a practical example of his vision in action.

Conclusion

Rajesh Yabaji exemplifies a founder who uses technology and tough-minded leadership to solve a very real problem: India’s fragmented trucking industry. He took his IIT education and ITC experience and built BlackBuck into a unicorn that now claims to serve every trucker in India. 

Under his guidance, BlackBuck helped digitize freight logistics, increased transparency and efficiency, and provided measurable value to both shippers and truckers. He continues to push the company toward nationwide reach, as he says, the goal is to be with every trucker across the country. 

By focusing on “muscle” (core value) and incremental gains, Yabaji has kept BlackBuck growth steady and sustainable. His journey shows how an energetic, focused leader can turn a startup into an industry changer, benefiting a vast economic segment while earning investor and public confidence.

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FAQs

Who is Rajesh Yabaji?

Rajesh Kumar Naidu Yabaji is the co-founder, Chairman, MD and CEO of BlackBuck, India’s largest tech-enabled trucking network. He is known for transforming the country’s fragmented logistics ecosystem using digital tools and data-driven solutions.

What is Rajesh Yabaji’s educational background?

Rajesh Yabaji completed his B.Tech in Metallurgical & Materials Engineering and MBA from IIT Kharagpur.

How did Rajesh Yabaji start BlackBuck?

After working at ITC managing large-scale logistics, Yabaji saw deep inefficiencies in freight movement. He quit his job in 2015 and co-founded BlackBuck with Chanakya Hridaya and Ramasubramaniam B to create a digital trucking marketplace.