My friend
Encouraging my friend in logistics to believe in his vision despite setbacks
Hear me out
I want to pen some thoughts to my friend similar to how Hunter.S Thompson wrote to his friend about purpose of life. It has phrases like this;
You’ve lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence. So it isn’t any too difficult to understand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.
Hunter was not holding back or being polite.
My friend is a far better operator than me in the field of logistics. He has been bummed that his recent stint didn’t work out for him. He was disappointed to experience the repeating behaviour of working for sub-par leaders. He feels despondent and starting to concede that he is not good enough.
This is the rally cry to suggest he doesn’t look elsewhere but focus inwards. Believe that what he knows is what logistics in India needs(it really does). It would be a better field if it has leaders like him instead of the current crop of excel pushers.
I have a personal disdain for people in this field who pull out an excel file for managing logistics processes and then say they are data driven. If you have to make them agree to something, you have to show it on an excel file for them.
No one choses logistics but once you are in it, its hard to get out because there is so much work to be done to make it better.
My friend, you are one of the few who have the inclination to make it better. The crop of leaders to whom you are reporting didn’t chose logistics as well , just ended up in it because no other function chose them as well. They feel the work is simple and can be solved if only everyone used excel or updated their file. They have limited operational acumen or empathy to engage with front line workforce.
They don’t understand the concept of variation. Hence, incapable of making any predictions or managing. Yet they fail upwards to become leaders.
You shouldn’t withdraw because you couldn’t prove them what you are upto in an excel sheet and you should definitely not be discouraged because you questioned why excel in the first place.
60% of the market is $120 billion typically gets executed in the full truckload in an open market load kind of a basis, right? Now this business largely happens through multiple layers of intermediaries, as we've always discussed……..Our business is nothing but a shift of this business from an offline industry to an online industry, right? Now in any marketplace, there are 2 critical factors. There is a demand side and there is a supply side, right? As you would be aware, in our history of the business, we initially had gone into the enterprise business. And one of the biggest reasons that we did not pursue that business later on was our inability to build direct supply.
Zinka Logistics Q1 25/26 investors call
See the recent public companies that IPO’d in the Indian trucking are tripping over themselves to show the potential of spot freight market as a growth opportunity having failed to establish themselves in the space for the past decade. In same timelines you have delivered results while being operational adept to the market conditions.
The new entrants don’t have a strong opinion because they actually don’t know what problems needs solving. If bringing the informal economy online is actually valuable is never questioned but you and I know its just a distraction.
It wont be hyperbolic to say that Whatsapp has done more for the stakeholders of freight logistics in India than all of the startups and public listed companies in this space. Add digital payments, two solid rails of communication and payments on which the entire market operates are not from the industry players.
With zero barriers to entry, why should we think anyone can build sustainable businesses by shifting the transaction through their marketplace.
Even when you happen to know the pain points and the process about solving the challenges using technology, you are first asked to prove your capability by running the low margin, operationally complicated and excel powered digital marketplaces.
If they can’t fathom that logistics is an essential business that happens with or without them. How will they ever understand how to solve the real challenges and to better than status quo?
We have spent a good part of last decade debating how we can make trucking market better in a manner that benefits everyone involved.
It is simple, if you are successful then people working in Indian trucking will make lesser phone calls overall. The simplicity of vision doesn’t do justice to both the complexity and quantity of challenges you will have to address. So, take the plunge and start believing in your vision.
Let me end by quoting hunter once again.
….. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice
Round up
I have been going down the rabbit hole of freight. Wrote two posts on LinkedIn
Trucking in India through the lens of recent IPO companies
I don’t think a task that takes 20 phone calls to do is a problem, it becomes a challenge when you want to reduce it to zero. You develop a solution to address this challenge and find people willing to part with their money as they see value in not making 20 calls. By stating every freaking thing your solution addresses as a problem creates noise and moves to realm of narrative building over value generation. Pour some marketing on top of it and you have distracted everyone from getting to the actual challenge that can be completed.
The dichotomy in spot freight market
I am coming around to believe that all spot negotiations between a cargo buyer and capacity seller comes down to price. Even when declaring intensions, consideration of price is given the highest priority with other factors.
Links that resonated
When it comes to painting vision. My super boss penned down what is the vision for logistics now with AI technology.
Six frontiers of logistics utopia
Sign off
I was meaning to write about recent IPO trends in Indian SME space. But felt this non illustrated and text only post deserves to be written at this moment in the hope of making sense to my friend.
I was alongside him in the past and dealt with the excel suits by building our own way and being stubborn about it. I was never popular with these folks because I never ceded to their demands. I come from privilege unlike my friend who is self made, so it was easier for me to not be bothered by their disapproval. I have come to believe where we came from matters in such matters and I respect his decision but I wanted to give it one more shot.
Signing off till next time,
Vivek, writing to friends in public