As a college graduate, Nishith Rastogi, founder and CEO at Locus, a SaaS logistics tech start-up, often sought inspiration from these lines quoted by Ben Silbermann, CEO at Pinterest: “The first step to start-up is to start out.” He would often dabble in small-scale projects. “I was looking to mature something or the other into a full-fledged venture,” says Rastogi
The launch of Locus was a brush with serendipity — having seen his psychiatrist father conduct post-traumatic treatment of a rape victim whose safety was compromised during a cab ride, Rastogi built RideSafe, a women’s safety geo-tracking app. It was adopted by online on-demand service players to monitor the movement of delivery partners. “It gave us an insight that while there were solutions focused on visibility in logistics, no player was building products to cater to the lack of decision-making.”
Incorporated in 2015, Locus develops tech-powered supply chain solutions for businesses — from planning of order dispatch, route optimisation to last-mile delivery of products — and counts Unilever and Tata Group among its clients. Revenue come from selling subscription packages of logistics automation software to enterprises. The packages are priced annually; customers are charged either on the basis of the number of orders fulfilled by clients or a fixed minimum commitment offered by clients. It has so far raised about $80 million and was last valued at around $300 million.
The company plans to expand particularly in North America and Europe. It also wants to extend its services in stocking, inventory management and staffing of riders by leveraging its repository of data. “We are roughly at a double digit million ARR (annual revenue run rate) and would like to continue growing at 100% YoY for the next 3-4 years,” says Rastogi.
His advice to budding entrepreneurs — “There’s no better time than today to build.” — Asmita Dey