Fourkites' Game Plan To Create A Dent In The Global Tracking Space
August Capital, Bain Capital, and Hyde Park Venture Partners-supported FourKites works with continuous information for the transportation area and plans to get a billion-dollar valuation in the following three years.
He was hired straight out of college by I2 Technologies, an American company that provides software and consultancy for supply chain management, manufacturing planning, category management solutions, and more. Having worked on enterprise products such as transportation management systems and supply chain tools, Elinjickal recalls, “This is where I learned the traits of the transportation sector and identified a key pain point; the lack of real-time communication in this sector,” shares Elinjickal.
Every truck has a GPS, every driver has a mobile phone and there is a lot of data present. Why, then, can’t we get this data in real-time?” asks Elinjickal. But before he ventured out, he joined a B-school and upon graduation, in 2014, he got a term sheet of US $1.25 million from a Chicago-based VC firm for his idea. These were the sowing seeds for his maiden venture, FourKites, which he founded along with Arun Chandrasekaran, the present CTO of the company.
FourKites was set up as a SaaS-based company that does real-time data tracking of shipments. It predicts when shipments will arrive at scheduled ports, monitors load temperatures, and analyses enterprise supply chain data. Elinjickal shares, “The reason why we have demand in the market is because of the pressure that companies are facing. In the B2C business, customers have data at their fingertips.
Seeing this, B2B companies want real-time data as well.” FourKites’ algorithm determines and analyses shipment arrival times, which helps customers lower their operating costs and improve on-time performance, among other things. In 2015, within 3 months of launching operations, FourKites identified its product-market fit and had to pivot its business model accordingly. Soon after, the same year, it got its first customer, Smithfield Foods, a meat processing company.
On the same day, the company got sued by its competitor, Macro Point, for patent infringement. Elinjickal says, “With our investors backing us, we sued them back and won the lawsuit.” After this, it was growing northwards and gained many large enterprise companies as its clients. The same year, the company got selected by Gartner as a Cool Vendor in Supply Chain Technologies 2016. Elinjickal indicates that the funds from the recent round are being channelized towards doubling its engineering team and building new teams by end of 2018.
Every truck has a GPS, every driver has a mobile phone and there is a lot of data present. Why, then, can’t we get this data in real-time?” asks Elinjickal. But before he ventured out, he joined a B-school and upon graduation, in 2014, he got a term sheet of US $1.25 million from a Chicago-based VC firm for his idea. These were the sowing seeds for his maiden venture, FourKites, which he founded along with Arun Chandrasekaran, the present CTO of the company.
Seeing this, B2B companies want real-time data as well.” FourKites’ algorithm determines and analyses shipment arrival times, which helps customers lower their operating costs and improve on-time performance, among other things. In 2015, within 3 months of launching operations, FourKites identified its product-market fit and had to pivot its business model accordingly. Soon after, the same year, it got its first customer, Smithfield Foods, a meat processing company.
On the same day, the company got sued by its competitor, Macro Point, for patent infringement. Elinjickal says, “With our investors backing us, we sued them back and won the lawsuit.” After this, it was growing northwards and gained many large enterprise companies as its clients. The same year, the company got selected by Gartner as a Cool Vendor in Supply Chain Technologies 2016. Elinjickal indicates that the funds from the recent round are being channelized towards doubling its engineering team and building new teams by end of 2018.
The reason why we have demand in the market is because of the pressure that companies are facing. In the B2C business, customers have data at their fingertips. Seeing this, B2B companies want real-time data as well
It also plans to invest in R&D, product, and engineering, especially in Omni-modal tracking, end-to-end visibility, and predictive analysis. The team plans to launch a customer support team in the city, shortly. "2017 was a great year for us,” recalls Elinjickal. The company’s revenue increased from US $2 million to the US $10 million, and it gained almost 70 customers. It also expanded international markets and signed its first global deal with Unilever Plc for tracking supply chains across Europe and Anheuser-Busch InBev in South Africa.
Talking about the road ahead, the entrepreneur says, “Our investors are thinking long term, and we are committed to the same, given the huge growth potential.” In the U.S., the trucking sector spends around the US $700 billion and the tracking market is a multi-billion dollar opportunity. “Tracking is just one of the products in the trucking industry and is more like scratching the surface.
But once we have data, we can do more, like predictive analytics, truck capacity management, and so on,” opines Elinjickal. With all its strategies in place, like new product launches and market expansion, FourKites is all set to work towards its aim of getting a billion-dollar valuation in the next three years by building a public, disruptive company.
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