“Although transportation is one of the biggest sectors in the world, digitalization there is still a missing part. If we are talking about logistics management with suppliers and carriers, the majority of things are still done manually in different channels, information is kept in offline excels. This is the gap where GoRamp comes in”, says Jevgenij Polonis, CEO and Co-Founder of Lithuanian startup GoRamp. 

So what is GoRamp? How does it work?

GoRamp is easy scalable online transportation management system that fully centralizes transportation management process and automates the exchange of information between manufacturers and their partners in 1 real-time updating software. Each company can easily create its private online account with the possibility to invite its trusted transportation partners and other related to logistics management process people in order to have instant access to exact information about active shipments, latest updates, reports, documents. It helps to liquidate lost or delayed information and increase the efficiency of all logistics chain workflow without high implementation costs. GoRamp can be used as a separated online transportation model or integrated via API with the existing ERP system as a plugin that gives an opportunity to fully automate logistics management workflow.

What are your competitors and competitive advantages?

There are a lot of IT solutions in the transportation market which are focused on separated processes of logistics management (tendering, invoicing tools, open marketplaces, etc). It‘s inconvenient for shipping companies because they need to use a lot of tools to track end-to-end process. The biggest challenge for them is to analyze data because they are forced to create reports manually collecting information from different sources.

Talking about direct competitors, there are big players in Germany, France, which are already covering all logistics chain in 1 software. However, they are focused only on the biggest enterprises with expensive pricing, implementation costs and long onboarding process. Corporates are only 10% of the market. What about the other 90%?

GoRamp‘s competitive advantage is that we have software for managing all logistics process and the product is affordable for small-medium companies. Small-medium companies, which are facing the same problems as enterprises (decentralized information exchange, unpredictable warehouse workflow planning, checking tons of invoices manually) now can centralize their logistics management and automate the exchange of information by implementing it faster than in 1 day!

What were the reasons behind coming up with this idea and launching this product?

3 Founders worked in logistics industry cumulatively for more than 20 years. We all saw the same problem – 70% of working time was always spent on manual information exchange, dealing with prices, loading dates/time. However, at the end of the day no one knew exact information because of a lot of changes in the chain. Very often information was delayed or even lost and it resulted in additional costs and inefficiency. The same with drivers hours spent near the warehouse waiting for loading/delivery because of no solution for booking slots in advance. Finally, all reports were created manually by collecting information from different sources.

Only enterprises as Coca Coca, Procter & Gamble, Unilever had their own IT solutions for managing transportation. Being closely to small-medium shipping companies and knowing that the majority of them are struggling with the same issues it was decided to create painkiller software for making logistics management process much easier and bring it to the digital era.

When exactly did you launch, what were the main challenges before launching?

We launched a product with a few pilot shipping companies in 2018. The biggest challenge was to develop the product, which could help to manage the complicated logistics chain in 1 place, but at the same time to make it as simple as possible. The majority of our current shipping companies were onboarded faster than in 1 day and it lets maintain that our challenge was achieved.

What are your target customers? Both in terms of user profile and geography?

GoRamp is an IT bridge between shipping companies and transportation partners. Our target customers are shipping companies, which arrange more than 150 transportation shipments monthly and still communicate and manage processes manually by sending emails, skypes, excel spreadsheets, etc. Shipping companies can use a product for managing processes not only with their own trusted transportation partners but there is also a possibility to use external additional carriers network during high season in order to increase current transportation partners database. In this way shipping company is all the time secured to have the best price in the market and high delivery on time KPI. GoRamp gives the opportunity to keep the same process, but real-time exchange of information and automated manual tasks increase efficiency up to 4 times! By the way, it’s real feedback from our current customers.

Geographically, at this moment we are focused on Baltics and Poland. However, as the product is easily scalable and onboarding process is well polished, we are not limited geographically and can easily onboard any shipping company with its transportation partners in the world.

What are the main challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming them?

The main challenge is that industry still doesn‘t know that solutions such GoRamp are already existing. Even if manufacturers know, they still think that the only way to have it is to develop it by themselves or buy an expensive software license.

At the moment we are trying to educate the industry and spread the information about GoRamp through content marketing and physical meetings with shipping companies. We are happy that bigger companies in Baltics are getting more focused on the digitalization of their processes and it helps to onboard them easier.

 How are you funded? Do you seek extra funding?

We were self-funded for the first 1,5 years. In April GoRamp received investment and acceleration from one of TOP 10 accelerators in Europe Startup Wise Guys. At the moment we are intensively searching for potential investors to join our bridge financing round in the upcoming few months.

Please introduce your founders, your core team and your broader team?

Our founders’ team consist of 4 people with a great balance of knowledge and experience in the field. Marius Repečka is our CSO. He has 12 years experience as Key account sales manager in TOP 10 Lithuanian transportation companies. The majority of his clients were small-medium sized companies and he knew well their pains. Ugnė Palionytė is COO. She brings logistics/supply chain management knowledge from manufacturing company. Moreover, she has also experience from one of the most successful hardware Lithuanian startups in tailoring manufacturing management processes. Justas Maziliauskas is CTO. He is more than 10 years in the IT business and brings the best IT project development practices. I am the CEO of the company. I have experience in cooperation with manufacturing worldwide corporates as Key account sales manager. Moreover, usage of their own created IT solutions gave the opportunity to gain experience of most valuable features in different products and now it can be used for developing GoRamp.

How has business been so far? Could you share some numbers to illustrate this (users, sales, etc)?

We started our active sales 4 months ago. Now we have 12 manufacturing, 250 transportation companies and 500 active users in the platform. As it was mentioned before, we are happy that shipping companies are interested in our solution and in the upcoming few months it is planned to onboard 10 more manufacturing companies.

Moreover, we are building partnerships with senior logistics consultants as resellers of our product. It‘s a win-win situation because they can introduce our software as a tool for increasing efficiency in the logistics chain and we get warm leads, which are ready to be onboard.

Future plans, ambitions? Simply speaking – what’s next?

Our goal for upcoming 6-9 months to become TOP transportation management system player in Baltics with the majority of biggest manufacturing/shipping companies.  We want to be a default tool for manufacturers for managing logistics chain. Our mission is to prove that companies can have effectively managed the end-to-end logistics process without investing hundreds of thousands of euros and years for developing it manually. Next step – Poland. The country is very attractive because of the concentration of manufacturing facilities, closeness to Lithuania and language, which is known for Founders.

Digitalization brings major advantages to our personal lifes. It‘s time to bring it to our daily tasks in working environment. If someone is from manufacturing/shipping companies, please feel free to contact us. We are happy to share our knowledge of how your logistics management processes could be drastically improved without a lot of effort.

Thanks for your answers!