LoadMe, recognised in 2015 by The National's readers as one of the top #UAEinnovators in business, plans to expand its truck-sharing platform into Arabic and Urdu languages, according to its chief executive.
LoadMe helps freight companies with empty lorries on the move find customers who can fill them. Its platform uses GPS tracking and smartphone apps to connect load owners with available lorries and arrange pickups in their area. The website helps transporters find freight for their return trips so lorries will not wastefully travel empty.
Currently LoadMe has 6,200 companies registered and transacting via its platform, said Sebastian Stefan, its chief executive. The accumulated fleet of all the transporters accounts for more than 10,000 trucks available for booking across the Middle East – with up to 800 loads published every month, or a total of US$200,000 worth of business in transportation services.
Since featuring in The National, LoadMe has been included in the list of Forbes 50 Most Promising Startups in the Middle East. It also received a new investment round of US$360,000 from Prime Venture Partners. The company is now signing deals with multinationals such as P&G to evelop customised solutions for large fleets of trucks.
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But Mr Stefan’s ambitions don’t stop here. The Romanian national aims to take the region by storm by offering his platform in different languages.
“By the end of 2016, we want to launch the Arabic and Urdu versions of the platform and consolidate our position in other GCC countries,” he said.
In March last year, Mr Stefan said that his idea could reduce traffic on the UAE’s roads by 10 per cent and help to lower carbon dioxide emissions in the GCC by 8 million tonnes a year, which is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 1.6 million cars.
They are “well under way due to these developments”, he said last month.
He also strives to maintain an innovative culture inside his company. “Each month, all the team members brainstorm for one day in search of an innovative project or an idea,” he said.
“The projects they come up with are presented at the end of the day to the team and the best project is to be tested in the market,” he added.
While most companies dread operational problems and obstacles, LoadMe tends to celebrate them, as they help the company overcome stagnation.
“We get inspired by every problem that we encounter,” said Mr Stefan. “This is because most often, the problems are the ones making us to come up with the most innovative solutions.”
The data-sharing concept is not new for the logistics industry – it has already proven successful in other markets through companies such as uship.com in the US and Teleroute and Timocom in Europe – and has proved to help save millions of dollars every month.
Following research of the best practices and features of load – or freight – boards in the US, Europe and Australia and supported by a development team based in Romania, Mr Stefan was able to develop the LoadMe platform.
Currently, 80 per cent of all the loads published on the LoadMe platform are matched with available space on a truck, according to Mr Stefan.
The next year will include updates to the platform including automatic matching of loads and truck owners, a more efficient radius and corridor search and user ratings.
business@thenational.ae
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