A lot is moving in the transportation industry right now. They notice this every day at the startup Dropon. With their transport management software, they are perfectly positioned as solution providers. We spoke with one of the founders, Anthony Viaene, about the plans of the startup.
Dropon helps companies with their logistics planning. They organize deliveries through a user-friendly planning and route optimization software. ‘Our application can indeed handle the entire logistics planning of a company. We optimize routes, can assign deliveries to drivers, but also invoicing and other administration is possible. This is fully cloud-based, by the way. We also take live traffic data into account, so that companies can switch routes quickly,” says Viaene.
Young startup
The startup is still very young and only saw the light of day in September this year. ‘We are still young, but we didn’t have to start from scratch,’ says Viaene. We bought the bases of the software from another company and continue building on it. The software has been around for about five years. Together with Jonathan Carette, I invested in this platform and currently, we have about six developers on board. All companies in the logistics or transport sector are potential customers. However, since it is very easy to work with subcontractors, companies that only produce but want to coordinate and manage their deliveries can also benefit from our software.
In the logistics sector, there are many software packages, but they often focus on only one aspect of transport. ‘Our toolset is much more complete than most of our competitors. Moreover, with our insights based on live traffic data we have an undeniable advantage. Currently, we are already active in Belgium and the Netherlands, but once we have traction in these countries we will look to enter the rest of Europe. In any case, if everything keeps going well, this will be on the radar this year or the next.
Perfect market conditions
Viaene already feels that this is the ideal time to enter the market. A lot is happening in the transportation sector. We are evolving towards CO2 -friendly cities, there is much more attention for emissions and the environment. In addition, margins in the transport sector are under pressure, so transport and logistics companies are much more interested in gaining insights into their operations. Making deliveries more efficient is really an issue at the moment. With Dropon, we respond to this perfectly. Moreover, through API’s we easily link to other software,” says Viaene.
Currently Dropon already has a few customers who are connected to the startup through a subscription. We want to build on this basis. There is already a lot of interest in the market, now we first need to conquer Belgium and the Netherlands, to then look further”, concludes Viaene.
Original article: https://www.computable.be/artikel/achtergrond/start-it/6517781/5679911/dropon-helpt-chauffeurs-op-de-goede-weg.html
