South Africa start-up Fastvan plans to ‘revolutionise and reinvent’ the industry of logistics in South Africa by moving the entire system online, creating increased automation, efficiency and transparency. By Gugu Lourie
Fastvan, has craeted an innovative app that enables businesses to track their orders in real-time via an in-app map. It was developed in San Francisco, US.
The app is aaimed at empowering businesses to deliver their orders in real-time, it enables Fastvan to give customers tools to know where their parcel has gone during its delivery journey.
It also allows customers to enjoy a quick and on-demand service by providing complete transparency and efficiency through its interactive app, which is available on Apple Store and Google Play Store.
Fastvan is target South Africa’s lucrative logistics industry of logistics that is dominated by major player. It believes that there still remains an impressive chunk of the market that can be captured by aspiring business ventures such as itself.
The local logistics industry is valued at about R486 billion and lspending is only about to increase in this region. The global courier service market is seen growing to about a $252.1 billion industry by 2018.
Fastvan is banking on securing clients, who are currentl making several manual phone calls accompanied with mountains of paperwork and quotations to schedule shipment, which is costly and slow.
It makes life easy for its cients by empowering them to use the app to submit their delivery request through their smartphone or desktop, and nearby courier drivers are notified.. Once the job is accepted, businesses have the chance to track their van/truck throughout the delivery process.
Fastvan believes its app provides its customers with a one-stop logistics solution, which covers all platforms from courier, removal and domestic delivery services, tracking the delivery on an in-app map to receiving automatic notifications once the order has been picked up and arrived at its destination. Customers can rate drivers on the app and receive automatic invoices by e-mail.
The app is billed to be launched by February 2016 in South Africa and thereafter Fastvan aims to expand it to other African countries by 2017, and eventually to European countries in 2018.
