Better Logistics with AI | Dinesh Dixit from LogiNext

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Dinesh Dixit 0:00
It’s all about business value, right? You decide what are the things that are extremely important for you to scale and execute in a much faster manner. And just focus on those integration touchpoints.

Alexander Ferguson 0:15
Welcome, everyone to UpTech Report UpTech Report is sponsored by TeraLeap. Learn how to leverage the power of video at teraleap.io. Today, I’m very excited to be joined by my guests. Dinesh Dixit who’s based in New York City, VP accounts at Loginext Welcome. Good to have you on man.

Dinesh Dixit 0:30
Hey, good to be here. Alexander, thank you very much for having me.

Alexander Ferguson 0:33
Yeah, now Loginext is an AI, ml based transportation automation platforms, they really try to help those that are in the logistics fields, enterprise companies to provide better route optimizations with your backbone help me understand how logic is going to get started? And how has it evolved over time? what problem are you guys solving?

Dinesh Dixit 0:53
Sure. So we started off back in 2014, when our founders left their jobs at Deloitte and IBM to start off larger Next, the whole value proposition was primarily around how do we use some of the concepts which are up and coming at that time, like artificial intelligence machine learning, IoT, IoT, and packaged it all into a commercial value proposition in the logistics and transportation sector where they had tons of experience? So that’s what the genesis of large and X was, was, how do we take those kinds of concepts, apply it in the real world sense to enable cost companies to improve their customer experience, improve the way they run their operations? With end goal, of course being How do you help them save money, because they’re doing the same kind of move hundreds of millions and millions and billions of times over all across the globe?

Alexander Ferguson 1:47
The companies that you’re working with, like pizza hut, McDonald’s, Singapore post, it helped me understand like, how are you helping them and give me a good use case, then have it in play?

Dinesh Dixit 1:56
Sure. So let’s take like Singapore posts or UPS or FedEx, any of these courier Express parcel companies that we talk about, they’re primarily responsible for delivering hundreds and 1000s of packages, let’s say in Manhattan, in New York City, there could be deliveries that need to happen all across from Midtown, uptown, downtown anywhere, and every day would look different. Some days in which there’s a huge demand in downtown, the some days in which there’s a huge demand, and Midtown and so on, and so forth. What I regard them helps us to do is to efficiently and automatically figure out how to define the routes on any given day based on the demand of that day. So it helps to match the supply, which is your drivers or vehicles, ours hours of service, and so on, and so forth, and match it to satisfy all of your demand while trying to reduce your costs. So the same number of deliveries instead of running 100 trucks every day, which also goes into the whole greenhouse admissions and all increased carbon footprint. How do you do that with lesser number of trucks while ensuring that the customers get better experience. So these companies have historically not focused much on customer experience, where that is now changing, where now they want to give better predictability, saying that your packet is not going to be here on this day, and just wait for it the whole day. Rather, it will be in the morning between 9am and 10am, or in the evening from 5pm, at 6pm, and so on.

Alexander Ferguson 3:30
Consumer expectation has increased dramatically. And if I can say that Amazon has probably pushed in a lot of people’s minds, but it’s only growing across the board in multiple consumer providers where people are assuming, hey, the business that I get my stuff from that I ordered my stuff from should be here quick, fast. How is that changing the game? And how do business leaders have to re adjust then they’re thinking of deliveries and logistics?

Dinesh Dixit 3:58
Sure. So it’s happening in two ways, right? One is, of course, the Amazon’s are trying to get into the whole delivery space and trying to capture more of the market share, where they are coming up with high technology in order to do this in a more efficient way with better experience. That’s where some of the legacy industry players, these giants are sitting up and taking notice and investing heavily in technology. On the other side, the whole Uber ification of the world, if you may well everyone wants to see the drivers in real time on a map view. They want to know exactly where their food delivery is, where the driver, the driver is and so on and so forth. That’s also playing a hugely important role in actually moving the needle and pushing the agenda in terms of investing in technologies like larger bags, which can help them deliver those capabilities, without having to invest a huge amount and putting together a technology ecosystem and a platform. Right, that’s where we are seeing the the most amount of success, where we can easily plug and play into their existing technology ecosystem, and start delivering those kinds of value added capabilities much, much more quickly than they would be able to do by themselves or by working with some of the legacy technology block

Alexander Ferguson 5:19
partners. Yeah, it’s always a balance between what do you develop in house? versus what do you bring in and mean what’s the trade off? In that and what would you are obviously, your, your bias cuz you know the value. But as best you can like, talk about the pros and cons and because it applies both to logistics, but any other type of software, honestly, when you’re bringing inside to your company, instead of trying to build it in house. You know, what are the pros and cons here we’re looking at?

Dinesh Dixit 5:47
Sure. And that’s something that I’ve seen, not just in the logistics sector, but even from my prior experience with Deloitte Consulting, having seen this in telecom and healthcare everywhere, right. That’s the classical dilemma that any CIO usually has whether to build up a whole team and house can build all of these capabilities themselves or partner with vendors and third party solutions, and SaaS platforms like Logitech right. Now, from my experience, what I’ve seen is there are two challenges which these companies usually face right one is time to market and speed, that is something that becomes extremely important for them, where the industry is changing at such a rapid pace that if they don’t continue innovating, then there is a huge chance that they will lose out on the market share and revenues and and potentially lead to a downward spiral, right. The second is around talent itself, the kind of talent that we are able to attract as a high growth, SaaS startup. And the kind of cool things that we’re able to do with machine learning AI, with connected devices, all of that, it usually becomes a challenge for some of these traditional players to attract that kind of talent to build those capabilities in house. That’s where I think a lot of companies are trying striking that balance from what we are seeing in the industry is some of those aspects of keeping it in house, the classical IP kind of capabilities, if you may, and cutting edge technologies are looking towards partners like larger next, in order to supplement that. And that’s where the whole API ecosystem and the platform ecosystem that we’ve built is really helping us scale in a much faster manner. Because the last thing any CIO or any technology executive wants to assure is, we are here to replace your IT organization or replace your IT systems. That’s a losing value proposition immediately, right? So plugging into existing systems, letting them continue to work the way they do, and providing additional value. That usually is the best way for not just as any sass company to scale and grow. The

Alexander Ferguson 7:57
age of API is here, an explosion of SaaS and software solutions is crazy and wonderful at the same time. So every organization, both enterprise and lower down, they have to be embracing this. But it’s a question of Okay, how easy is it to integrate and start using and implement? What would you say is just a word of advice to CTOs and CIOs who are having to look at solutions like this? And and think, Okay, how long will this take and the integration? And what does that process look like?

Dinesh Dixit 8:34
Sure. So my advice to them would be that they need to focus on just keeping the things which are important as part of the integration because there is like, tons of API’s that any provider would provide. It’s all about business value, right? You decide what are the things that are extremely important for you to scale and execute in a much faster manner, and just focus on those integration touchpoints. Now, the flip side, from our perspective, building everything in a platform first or API first kind of an approach, where connectivity for the existing ecosystems is the number one priority. So that way, we can build the UX and all of the usability and user experience aspects on top of it. But being API force and API driven, really helps to get things kicked off in a much faster manner, right? From the whole architecture itself. creating these in a seamless manner. Using the latest technologies really helps to understand what the system ecosystem needs to look like across both of their ID enterprise ecosystems and ours, and then allows the data to flow seamlessly with each of the systems being responsible for those specific aspects on right, that that’s what we have seen really help us especially in this space, because logistics companies in general have Sometimes have really antiquated and archaic systems which we have to work with, and also deliver value.

Alexander Ferguson 10:08
Let’s take a step back for a moment of looking at the the space that we’re in the future of logistics, because of the pandemic, lots of people working from home and this concept of, of convenience of let me just deliver things to my house instead of going out to the store or going out to their or even to my office or whatever. What What can you speak to as far as the trends that you’re saying, and how that’s going to come into play for logistics?

Dinesh Dixit 10:36
Sure, one of the biggest trends drove and I were joking about is that we are seeing almost like 200 to 50% growth in the whole home bulky, big and bulky goods segment, right, where people are just ordering furniture, they’re working from home, looking at our maybe I need a side table or a center table here. And that has seen a huge boom, right? Another example is my own mom. So she’s back in India. And she is like, during the pandemic, the first time consumer of online delivery service, where I get a text one day, saying that, hey, I ordered my first delivery from Amazon in India. And she was really excited, right. So that’s the number one thing that’s I think going to happen, right? There are a lot of these first time consumers who are not really used to online ordering, they are here to stay, they’re not really going anywhere, when they start realizing the convenience of such kind of models. Now, it’s going to really keep this volume going as we move forward. Right? The other aspect of the pandemic and which has really helped in the whole logistics case. And in our case as well, is the huge demand uptick, which a lot of the providers were not able to satisfy using their existing fleet and existing drivers and pool right pool of vehicles. That in directly has actually helped us have the value proposition and the need was always there. Right? the need of system like large annex was always there, the urgency that we’re seeing coming from our customers now to implement such solutions. That is something that that we are definitely excited about. Because there is a lot of opportunity where customers, our customers are trying to address their needs and volumes as quickly as possible.

Alexander Ferguson 12:29
What do you see as now this trade off between convenience versus state sustainability? And how does that affect and the bigger picture of where we’re headed? Right?

Dinesh Dixit 12:43
With great convenience comes great responsibility? I would say, right, no, and that is something that we I’m seeing a lot of customers start to focus on, right? cost reduction is definitely one of the big agenda topics for them. But also, the direct effect of using a route planning algorithm machine learning driven algorithm is the reduced mileage where the same number of trucks need to drive lesser miles in order to satisfy the demand that they have. And that is really helping to reduce the whole carbon footprint, right. With the whole advent of online ordering and the uptake that we’re seeing right now, the density of these deliveries are also increasing. So the same, in the same area, there are more people now starting to order. And the more efficiently that our algorithm is able to, to pull all of these things and group all of these things together and create routes where there is not like five trucks which have to go in the same neighborhood, it automatically helps to reduce costs and also create a greener planet, especially something that I care about having a two and a half year old daughter at home, right? So that’s something that I feel good about, as I see more of such implementations going live

Alexander Ferguson 14:04
by looking at your your platform itself, like can you just share any like data on how many different transactions are going through there and you’re having to manage just to give the sheer volume sharp.

Dinesh Dixit 14:18
So they recently like our technology team was was sharing some of these metrics of what we’ve achieved so far already. So we have processed more than 1 billion shipments on our platform with more than 5 billion data points being collected across the globe. So we are live now in 52 countries and very rapidly adding more as we speak. And that scale and the volumes that we’re handling has been definitely tremendous, right? This is something that we continue we see continuing as we move forward. And as we break into new and new regions and new territories. We’re just Looking forward to seeing more of such metrics being hit?

Alexander Ferguson 15:04
What can you share? What are you most excited about as far as roadmap what’s coming up new features, or just where you guys are headed that you want to share?

Dinesh Dixit 15:11
Sure. So from our perspective, right, just to take a step back, there are multiple industries that the platform sauce, so right, so there is the career Express parser, like we spoke about, there is on demand delivery for the quick service restaurants like the Pizza Hut, McDonald’s of the world, where there is dynamic pickup and delivery that’s happening. There is also big and bulky movements that we do like the dishwasher installation, and furniture, deliveries, and so on and so forth. And then there is also the classical, the CPG, the retail those kind of use cases on how do you replenish all of your stores, from your central distribution warehouse, and do it in the most efficient manner, right? From our roadmap perspective, the good part about our team as they keep adding more and more functionality every two weeks every four weeks. And it’s definitely exciting for us to see the the some of the cool things that’s coming up is primarily around how do you automate a lot of the courier Express parcel movements, end to end, right from the time it’s picked up in a warehouse in California, and delivered all the way through multiple hubs in multiple locations? To my wife was sitting in New York, how do you optimize all of that? How do you give that kind of visibility end to end for to create that differentiated customer experience, right? The other ones are, of course, in the big and bulky segment? How do you make all of these things much more efficient, where your customers do not need to give a full day window. Very recently, I got a delivery from BestBuy, where they gave me a full day window saying that, hey, the guys will be there some time during the whole day. So you need to just need to stop doing whatever you’re doing, and then just wait for them. So those kinds of things are really, really interesting. That’s coming up. And soon we’ll have some public distribution of some of those materials.

Alexander Ferguson 17:18
It’s an exciting time, where technology can be playing such a crucial role in in every, every one of our lives. For you, what do you see as any tech innovations Do you see coming together both maybe at your company, but even on the bigger just that’s coming down the road that’s going to change the way we’re all working and living and playing?

Dinesh Dixit 17:38
Sure, I think two of them were which I personally, quite looking forward to, and keeping an eye out on. One of them is, of course, the whole self driving, right? I think the first commercial implementation of autonomous cars is actually going to be in the logistics industry. That’s primarily because when you have such long call movements and trucks going on relatively straightforward paths, I think that’s one of the easiest use cases to solve, versus what Elon Musk might be promising in terms of full self driving capabilities in a in a narrow city or in Manhattan. Right. So I think that’s going to be extremely interesting, because then a lot of these things, which have been limiting factors in certain ways around the number of hours someone can drive and their own physical capabilities around being able to do it. And the third time, and even driver shortage in general is a huge problem in the logistics industry, right? There’s not enough pool of drivers, and they’re all competing for the same kind of pool of resources. That’s going to open up a lot of different avenues for these companies. And that’s where we are looking forward to much more use cases around the routing capabilities of how do you really take all of these kinds of self driving vehicles and routed in the most efficient manner so that you can get all of these things done as quickly as possible. The other one is going to be the whole drone delivery business, right? A lot of these remote areas and even densely populated areas, were getting a drone delivering some of these goods is going to be much faster and easier. And also in the long term much cheaper, right? Instead of having vehicles and people and all of that good stuff. So that’s also going to be interesting and something we are keeping our eyes open for her.

Alexander Ferguson 19:39
I will be very interesting when we all start getting drone deliveries. I feel like there’s some movie I watched recently where futuristic, but not too futuristic. Where was a pizza delivered via drone? I really like saying Pizza Hut delivering your pizza by drone. Just last fun question. for you that you have any good books or podcasts or audiobooks that you’ve been reading or listened to lately that you would recommend

Dinesh Dixit 20:07
Sure. So some of my personal favorite podcasts are the the Tim Ferriss show just to share about all of these different people from different walks of life just to hear their stories is definitely interesting. Planet money of course, is also another one which is definitely interesting to hear from books actually recently, our CEO through well he gifted me this one called the hard thing about hard things that something that I hadn’t read previously some reading that right now. And not the one on a personal front I’m reading is the full brainchild, which is more on how do you make your kid grow up with a well rounded kind of development from the whole have mental capabilities and all of that so that’s more of a person from for my two and a half year old.

Alexander Ferguson 21:02
I have a five year old and a one and a half year old. So that’s just as crucial as growing up. I love it. Well thank you so much for your insights and it’s intriguing to hear the the future of logistics and the optimization of it for those that want to learn more you can go to loginextsolutions.com But yeah, right. And you’ll be able to sign up free as a good demo or get a trial. How’s that work?

Dinesh Dixit 21:31
That’s a free trial online that that folks can sign up for and give the platform a spin.

Alexander Ferguson 21:37
Awesome. All right, well, thanks again for your time everyone. Head to UpTech Report comm to see this full interview and a lot more and we’ll see you all guys next time. That concludes the audio version of this episode. To see the original and more visit our UpTech Report YouTube channel. If you know a tech company, we should interview you can nominate them at UpTechreport.com. Or if you just prefer to listen, make sure you’re subscribed to this series on Apple podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcasting app.