Maersk and Blackbuck partner to digitally revolutionise the Indian export-import containerised trucking market

• The partnership amplifies Maersk’s efforts towards accelerating inno-vation in the logistics space, enabling trade and supporting the vision of becoming the global integrator of container logistics.
• For BlackBuck, India’s largest online trucking marketplace, the part-nership fuels their transformation wave into a new market - highly fragmented export-import (EXIM) containerised trucking space.
• Maersk and BlackBuck will together address key industry challenges around demand-supply visibility, real-time tracking and improving as-set utilisation by creating better network visibility for customers.

Mumbai, India 20th August 2019: Maersk, the world leader in integrated container logistics, today announced its partnership with BlackBuck, India’s largest online marketplace for trucking, to provide an online marketplace for containerised trucking in EXIM logistics in India. The Indian government has set ambitions to reduce logistics cost from 14% of the GDP to less than 9% by 2022. The new platform will be owned and operated by Black- Buck with Maersk supporting BlackBuck to develop compelling industry specific solutions. The neutral platform will be open to the whole industry and will empower sustainable growth & efficiency by reducing touchpoints in the supply chain; thereby improving customer experience, matching demand-supply through the year and provide consistency in service delivery through real-time visibility and control.

Announcing the collaboration with BlackBuck, Arjun Maharaj, Head of Sales, Maersk South Asia, said, “Our customers are dealing with fragmented vendors with varying service levels of communication, geographical, financial & infrastructural dis-parities resulting in suboptimal supply chains. At Maersk, we have committed our-selves to working with partners who understand these challenges, match our set of values and have expertise in both logistics & technology.” BlackBuck, the near-unicorn status company, has been a pioneer in bringing the offline operations of trucking online, be it matching a shipper with a trucker or reshaping the infrastructure around trucking to facilitate payments, insurance, and financial services.

Speaking about the collaboration with Maersk, Ramasubramaniam B, Co-Founder & COO - Strategic Initiatives said, “At BlackBuck, over the last 4 years, we have developed our robust product & technology that maximises the billable kilometres of a truck, delivering higher realization to the truck owners & driving a low-cost transportation network to the shippers. Our product will add significant value to the EXIM containerised trucking industry in India that has the additional complexity of meeting the timelines of sea freight connections, apart from other regular trucking related challenges. Maersk with their industry specific knowledge and expertise, will help us trans-form this space through digitization.”

Maersk has set out on a digital transformation journey and amongst various other initiatives globally is the India-focused OceanPro accelerator program which was launched in 2018. The solutions developed by few of the start-ups in first cohort of OceanPro are already being implemented through various services to accelerate technology innovation in Shipping & Logistics industry in India and globally. The company launched the second cohort of OceanPro in July this year with a group of five start-ups. ‘’At Maersk, we are collaborating with such start-ups that will help us solve land-side logistics challenges in India by not only reducing costs but also creating efficiencies for all the stakeholders in the value chain” says Bhavik Mota, Head of Product, Maersk South Asia.

About BlackBuck

Founded in 2015, BlackBuck has been a pioneer in bringing the offline operations of trucking online, be it matching a shipper with a trucker or reshaping the infrastructure around trucking to facilitate payments, insurance, and financial services. BlackBuck is committed to making it easier for millions of truckers to book a load and move at capacity and enable shippers of all sizes to have access to the right truck, at the right time for the right price – all at a click of a button. Today, BlackBuck is India’s largest trucking network, and the company’s robust technology platforms deliver reliability, efficiency and seamless experience for shippers and truckers.

BlackBuck has over 3,00,000+ Partner trucks empanelled on the platform, operating pan India in over 3000+ villages and 400+ industrial hubs. Currently, the Company has over 10,000+ onboard clients including SMEs and large corporates such as Asian Paints, Coca Cola, Reliance, ACC and Hindustan Unilever. BlackBuck is sup-ported by the best of investors’ fraternity that includes Accel Partners, Apoletto Asia, B Capital, Flipkart, Goldman Sachs, IFC, LightStreet, Sands Capital, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global and Wellington.

For further information, please contact:
Adhish Alawani
Maersk
Regional Communications Manager – West Central Asia
Phone: +91 7875557435
E-mail: Adhish Alawani