Maersk, Blackbuck partnership to bring revolution in containerised trucking market

August 21, 2019: Maersk has collaborated 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 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) to less than 9 percent by 2022. The new platform will be owned and operated by BlackBuck 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 disparities resulting in suboptimal supply chains. At Maersk, we have committed ourselves to work with partners who understand these challenges, match our set of values and have expertise in both logistics & technology.”

BlackBuck has been 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 & chief operating officer (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 realisation to the truck owners & driving a low-cost transportation network to the shippers.

ur 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 transform this space through digitisation.”

Maersk has set out on a digital transformation journey and amongst various other initiatives globally is the India-focused OceanPro accelerator programme which was launched in 2018. The solutions developed by a few of the start-ups in the 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 landside logistics challenges in India by not only reducing costs but also creating efficiencies for all the stakeholders in the value chain,” said Bhavik Mota, head of product, Maersk South Asia.