A Chat with Jai Kanwar, Co-Founder & Joint MD at Digital Freight Platform: Zeus

Zeus has digitised freight management with an innovative, web-based platform and driver app. It’s a lean, automated and integrated platform that’s making the industry more efficient and more sustainable.

Zeus tracks every single delivery, digitises paperwork and enables real-time ETAs. It also provides complete records of vehicle, distance and cargo type, so shippers have all the data they need for carbon emission calculations. The single point of access provides instant access to a scalable fleet, matches freight more efficiently to hauliers, and gives total cost control and forecasting ability to their customers. It reduces road freight administration for shippers by 71%.
 
 

 

What do you think makes Zeus unique?

 
Our platform and driver app are a game-changer for the British freight industry. It’s an industry that was used to traditional ways of working. Our success comes down to a combination of a tech-first approach and a commitment to the highest level of customer service. The technology is lean and easy-to-use, and we provide a haulier-facing support team, so any hiccups don’t become problems.

This multi-model approach means that we have a great relationship with our hauliers and our shippers see benefits in terms of service levels and reliability. Our All Stars haulier loyalty programme has been hugely popular – a reward scheme that provides real help with core overheads, by providing up to 50% off leading brand truck tyres.

We’re also working to reduce the number of empty lorries running on British roads every day (currently around 150,000). Our hauliers saw a 22% reduction in empty legs in 2021.
 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
Since launching our first product in August 2020, our growth has been phenomenal. We didn’t
anticipate the full impact Brexit would have on the haulage industry, and the demand it created for a service like ours. The biggest challenge was keeping pace.

Just six months after launch we landed AB InBev – the biggest brewer in the world – and our clients now include Primark, Decathlon, P&G and Branston. We saw ten-fold revenue growth over the 2020-2021 period and, in 2021, we enjoyed 326% growth in volume.
We now work with over 40 enterprise-level clients, handling 660,000 tonnes of freight annually, worth £6.6 billion. Our growing virtual fleet stands at over 13,000 HGVs in the UK, and we’re on-track for 400% revenue growth in 2022.

We also started our planned expansion into Europe a year ahead of schedule, with new customers in France, the Czech Republic and Italy. And our first angel round has just completed, netting us £1.8 million to help continued expansion.
 

What can we hope to see from Zeus in the future?

 
Our vision is to create a single technological standard that increases efficiency and reduces the environmental impact of global freight. The Zeus marketplace was the first product – a platform that brings together hauliers and shippers and serves full truck load business at scale. Next will come additional services including partial truck loads (PTL) and groupage (transporting a shipment with other goods); vans and light goods vehicles; and an SME business service – where single assignments of any size can be catered for.

Other SaaS solutions are also in development – these will allow companies to use our technology for their internal logistics operations. And we’re already launching into multimodal capabilities, expanding our services beyond road haulage to rail, so we can modernise more of the global supply chain.