Logistics startup Porter to expand to 50 cities by 2030: Pranav Goel

In the next five years, we will move from 20 lakh SMEs (small and medium enterprises) who come to the platform every month to servicing more than one crore customers, says Goel

Logistics startup Porter is eyeing to bring in more driver partners and customers into its fold. In a video interaction with Udisha Srivastav, co-founder and executive vice-chairman Pranav Goel talks about the recent fundraising, how the amount is being used, its expansion plans and partnership with ONDC, among others. Edited excerpts:

 

Let us know about the company's recent fundraising and how is the amount being used?

 

It's been a fairly large fundraise, a mix of both primary and secondary capital. With this amount, we want to go deeper and launch more categories. Over the years, we realised that there's still 20 per cent of customers that we are not able to service because of different requirements. So, the intent is to solve that. E-loader is one segment that we want to launch across India. The other big objective is to go wider and replicate the same business model into multiple cities in India. Also, launch in more international geographies where this model makes sense.

 

What are the targets for the years to come?

 

In the next five years, we will move from 2 million small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who come to the platform every month to servicing more than 10 million customers. We have around 300,000 driver partners, and that number will exceed 1.2 million. We are present in close to 22 cities in India and this number will become around 50 cities. There is also a massive sustainability goal. By 2030, 80 per cent of our new onboardings will be electric vehicles (EVs).

 

What are the top cities of operations for Porter? Which vehicle categories are the high-frequency ones?

 

Delhi is the biggest city, given its size and scale. After Delhi, there are Mumbai and Bengaluru. Chennai, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad follow. We probably have around 10 vehicle categories and they're fairly distributed. We have four high-frequency categories, including two-wheelers, three-wheelers, and entry-level four-wheelers. They represent 80 per cent of our revenues. The other six categories comprise nearly 20 per cent of the revenues. 

 

Do you also have fleet partners or is it a driver-owner model completely?

 

We are a completely asset-light model where the driver-partner has his vehicle. In more than 90 per cent of the cases, the owner and the driver are one person. We also have fleet operators, but they comprise less than 10 per cent of our volumes. There are around 100 fleet partners who operate with us, including Zypp Electric and Magenta Mobility. 

 

What percentage of vehicles is currently electric? 

 

Metros, Tier-I cities typically do slightly better compared to Tier-II markets. In Delhi, 70 per cent of three-wheelers are EVs. At an overall level, this number might be around 30-40 per cent. In cargo vehicles, India still doesn’t have EVs for all payload capacities. 

 

What's the company's revenue breakdown?

 

Around 85 per cent of our revenue comes from micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which are local retail stores, small manufacturers, furniture shops, paints and chemicals shops, among others. Then, more than 10 per cent comes from consumers directly. The remaining 5 per cent is from large enterprises like e-commerce firms, courier companies, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) firms and direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands.

 

Porter integrated with ONDC in September 2024. How is it working out?

 

It's another demand channel for us. There's been a positive trend line in terms of orders. Earlier, we only used to have two-wheeler orders, but now we see a blend of two-wheelers and mini trucks. Since our integration, we have seen a 30 per cent month-on-month increase in orders.