Fortigo bids big on voice activated systems with $10M funding

by Abhinav Mohapatra

Bangalore-based logistics startup, Fortigo has announced that it has secured $10 million in its Series A funding round. Existing investors, Infosys co-founder and former UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani and Accel Partners led the funding round. Fortigo Network is an Indian freight exchange platform enabled with live transaction and electronic payments. It also offers business services and facilities for the Indian road transport sector to enable the users to improve their efficiency and profitability. Using the company’s cloud-based platform, consignors, consignees, fleet owners, transport companies and agencies can exchange information, transact and manage their entire business.

Fortigo going big on expansion

Fortigo aims to use the new funds to enhance the platform as well as fuel expansion of their truck network which currently has presence in all south-Indian states, south Maharashtra, Gujarat, Pune, Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi NCR.
“Our blueprint is to enter and mark our presence in all the important transport hubs of the country including Guwahati, Jaipur, Raipur, Nagpur, Lucknow and Kanpurand, the hubs of Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand over the next nine months. With this push, we expect to achieve our next milestone of reaching break-even by December 2018,” said Anjani Mandal, Co-founder and CEO, Fortigo Network.

By leveraging its partnerships with Federal Bank and IOCL (Indian Oil Corporation Limited), Fortigo Network facilitates completely cashless transactions on its platform. Additionally, it claims to use over 800 networked retail outlets of IOCL to provide complementary amenities to truck drivers, such as overnight stay facilities, secure parking, breakdown assistance, fuel discounts, etc., for greater driver safety and convenience. With the additional financial support, the company aims to broaden the multitude of such business services that are offered to its members.

“We will utilize the fund to build our core technology further. The user-interface of the platform, which has been designed using 14 streams of technology, will be augmented and simplified to further improve the ease-of-use,” said Vivek Malhotra, Co-founder and Chief of Strategy and Marketing, Fortigo Network.
He further added that the company is also working on voice activated systems- on being able to activate by voice and deliver responses in various languages, according to the users’ preferences. He further expressed interest to facilitate the technology enablement of small and medium-sized fleet owners in getting onto the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN).
“With the proposed GST coming up and growing importance of electronic payments in business transactions, we expect the Fortigo Network to play a significant role in transforming the unorganized and fragmented transport industry,” said Subrata Mitra, Partner, Accel Partners India.
Launched in June last year, Fortigo Network expects to grow by close to 50,000 trucks over the next 2 years.