SUMMARY
Porter was among the first movers in the hyperlocal logistics tech wave, and now, the startup is banking on the last-mile logistics boom fuelled by quick commerce
Cofounder Pranav Goel attributes the revenue growth and scale to Porter’s sharp focus on asset utilisation for vehicle owners and the logistics needs of SMEs
The freshly-minted unicorn has also gradually expanded into inter-city verticals like packers-and-movers and courier services to take on bigger players
What was the vision behind Uber? Its marquee founder, Travis Kalanick, once said the concept was a “cross between lifestyle and logistics”. Little did he know that three IITians — Pranav Goel, Vikas Chaudhary and Uttam Digga — would actually ‘uberise’ logistics and set up Porter
to serve the on-demand, hyperlocal supply chain.
The year was 2014, when quick commerce was unheard of, and ecommerce giants like Flipkart, Myntra or Snapdeal did not promise time-bound deliveries at scale (read: 24-48 hour windows). But the seeds of change were already there. The country’s digital transformation was gaining momentum, with mobile internet becoming more affordable and accessible. Both end-users and service providers were becoming accustomed to mobile-first business models through apps, and advanced features like GPS tracking and automated route planning had begun to reshape the logistics industry.
The timing could not have been better. A decade ago, poor services and high costs continued to plague India’s road logistics. The market relied heavily on small fleet operators, local transporters and offline intermediaries, who manually connected demand and supply. But for the nation’s millions of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which form the backbone of India’s economy, as well as small retailers and digital commerce companies, the logistics ecosystem offered little in terms of streamlined services or operational transparency.
Porter was among the first movers seeking to bring the much-needed speed, scale, and technology-driven innovation to India’s hyperlocal delivery business, utilising multiple vehicle categories such as mini trucks, two-wheelers, electric vehicles (EVs) and more. It caters to both businesses (B2B) and individuals (B2C), providing a comprehensive range of services, including enterprise-level goods movements and management, packers-and-movers for relocation and intercity courier services, all on a single platform. In essence, it has accelerated goods movement through digitalisation and decentralisation, with a focus on agile and efficient Intracity deliveries.
It has reaped rich dividends in the process. Porter became India’s second unicorn in 2025 after raising a Series F round. It did not officially disclose the deal value, but Inc42 had earlier reported a funding round worth $200 Mn (a little over INR 1,700 Cr), valuing the startup between $1.1 Bn and $1.2 Bn. After a decade-long operation, it claims to work with 3 Lakh owner-drivers and a total of 30 Lakh customers. Additionally, the number of its SME customers has surpassed 20 Lakh.
The logistics startup currently covers 23 Indian cities and aims to add five or six more every year. Overall, the goal is to be present in the top 50 cities in India within the next five years and make a foray into five or six overseas markets where its tech-powered aggregation and supply chain management model will be effective.
Besides, it aims to expand its SME pool to 1 Cr+ by 2030, increase the number of driver-partners to 12 Lakh and push its sustainability goal by incorporating more electric vehicles (EVs) into its network. The founding team estimates an 80% rise in EV numbers among newly onboarded vehicles by 2030.
The business has a revenue-sharing arrangement in place, charging up to 30% of the billed amount depending on the location, with the remainder going to its driver-partners. It is still in the red but hopes to hit the profit button in the current financial year. Full audited results for FY25 are not yet available, but Goel (he is also the executive vice-chairman at Porter) projects a 50% year-over-year revenue growth and a steady reduction in losses. He also claimed that Porter had been EBITDA positive in the past few quarters, although Inc42 could not independently verify this.
A look at its earlier numbers reveals many interesting takeaways. Between FY20 and FY24, its operating revenue surged nearly tenfold, from INR 274 Cr to INR 2,733.7 Cr. However, the most notable jump occurred between FY21 and FY23, and Porter saw more than 100% YoY revenue growth in FY23 alone. In FY24, this growth rate slowed to 56%, but losses dropped sharply by 45%, falling to INR 95.7 Cr.
Goel attributed the company’s ability to scale efficiently to its tech-first model. “The advantage of tech-driven companies with lower operational intensity is that they can achieve rapid revenue growth without a corresponding rise in costs,” he explained. “For example, while we expect our revenue to grow by 50% YoY, our costs may only rise by 10-15%. This efficiency helped us reduce losses even as we increased revenue by more than 50% in FY24.”
Asset Utilisation Was The Core Thesis Behind Porter
In 2013, when the founders first sat down to explore startup ideas, they were not thinking about logistics. They were looking for large, broken markets where technology could bring about meaningful changes.
“Logistics, it turned out, was both massive in size, yet deeply inefficient and largely untouched by tech. And that’s what caught our attention,” said Goel. “Most large markets eventually fix themselves. There’s too much value on the line for inefficiencies to persist. But logistics in India defied that logic. It was too fragmented, disorganised and uninviting.”
It was definitely not a ‘cool’ sector. According to industry estimates, the logistics market size in India was nearly $160 Bn at the time. But costs soared to 13-14% of the country’s GDP, compared to 7-8% in developed markets like the US and Germany.
On the demand side, customers were unhappy with unpredictable pricing and unreliable services, a direct outcome of little or no tech integration that would ensure real-time vehicle tracking. On the supply side, driver-owners and small fleet operators faced challenges due to low vehicle utilisation — empty trucks during return trips. It was the norm in those days, as they lacked direct access to a tech-enabled customer network and could secure suitable bookings for their way back. Worse still, there could be significant idle time between trips or, in some instances, no trips at all during the day.
“Despite the chaos around us, we saw things differently. We believed that by digging deeper, we would find a niche where technology could genuinely solve a real-world problem at scale. Among all the service layers — long haul, warehousing, first-mile, last-mile — it was the on-demand intracity logistics that stood out,” said Goel.
Industry anomalies were especially evident in that sub-segment due to the absence of standard pricing within the city (long-distance rates were more stable) and infrequent bookings. It mirrored the challenges cab drivers faced before the Uber and Ola blitzkrieg, when there was no clarity about the next trip or one’s earnings.
The lack of asset utilisation was the worst scourge, though. Before entering this space, the founders did an in-depth market survey and met 500 vehicle owners across Mumbai. Later, they did similar deep dives in Delhi and Bengaluru. To their shock, the team discovered that drivers were only active for about three hours during a 10-hour workday. The rest of the time was wasted due to long idle periods, waiting for return loads, or simply because demand was inconsistent.
A typical vehicle owned by a small fleet operator or an individual driver could make five trips a day. But in reality, it was averaging only about 1.5 trips daily, a mere 30% utilisation (more on this later).
The trio also spoke with more than 100 businesses and identified several critical pain points. Among these were issues with service quality, friction with logistics vendors and limited access to a broader pool of vehicle owners. In intracity operations, vendors and customers often relied on a small group of driver-owners, resulting in delays, unpredictable services, and operational inefficiencies.
“In Mumbai, there was a saying: Get him to buy a small truck. It implied doom because it was such a broken industry,” recalled Goel. “When we chose intracity logistics, we saw an opportunity to streamline the space with a tech intervention that directly connects SMEs and retail customers with independent drivers and gig workers in real time. This has enabled businesses to access a bigger fleet for greater convenience and offered drivers consistent demand, thereby reducing idle time and increasing earnings. That focus continues to drive our mission of moving a billion dreams, one delivery at a time.”
There was another key reason to enter this space. Porter wanted to build a technology company, not one heavily dependent on operations. This is because tech companies do not scale linearly, and they are more capital-efficient during the growth phase. “Managing large operational teams is a challenge in itself, and we wanted to avoid that. With our tech background, it made perfect sense to build a technology-first company in the logistics space,” Goel told Inc42.
Porter’s Service Bouquet Was Not Built In A Day But In Four Key Phases
By improving asset utilisation and matching fragmented demand with supply, Porter has transformed intracity logistics. Nevertheless, competition was growing as an emerging market for intracity freight was developing. More than two dozen startups entered this space by 2015, fuelled by increasing demand, venture capital attention and a sense that this segment was ready for disruption. Startups like Blowhorn and LetsTransport soon followed suit, each attempting to address a different fragment of the Intracity puzzle, from mini-truck aggregation to enterprise-oriented logistics.
Porter’s journey was incremental, though, in an era of low mobile penetration and limited consumer know-how. Porter 1.0 relied on a call centre and Google Sheets to run its business. The team distributed pamphlets with Porter’s contPorter’sils and unique selling points while also visiting shops and local businesses, but their efforts saw limited success. Out of 100 people approached, only 10 listened and two or three placed orders.
However, word of mouth and good service gradually improved the conversion rate, fuelling organic growth. Initially, the entire process was manual. A customer’s cargo pickup and destination details were recorded at the call centre and manually entered into spreadsheets, while distances were calculated via Google Maps. Based on this data, an estimated fare was worked out and shared with the customer. If the deal came through, calls were made to available drivers closest to the pickup point (determined through SIM tracking via mobile towers). Porter used to provide these SIM cards to its registered driver-partners. This process took about 20 calls to fulfil just one order.
Porter 2.0 introduced a CRM system that moved its spreadsheet operations to a dashboard and automated customer relationship management. It marked the startup’s transition to a more robust system where everything, from costs, revenue and accounting, was recorded digitally.
By 2015, it had shifted from SIM-based tracking to smartphones, making the process more reliable, and rolled out a driver app. As soon as an order was punched into the CRM, the system automatically checked which driver-partners were near the pickup point, available online and free to accept the trip. If someone was available near the location and idle, the system would push the order directly to the app, and the trip could be accepted immediately.
Later that year, it launched its customer-facing app, finally ending orders taken over the phone. “With each product we introduced, the number of calls required to fulfil an order kept dropping,” explained Goel. “When we started, it took around 20 calls per order. After the driver app, that dropped to five and then to one as we rolled out our customer app. Today, the number of calls per order is less than 0.1.”
How Porter Has Deepened & Diversified Service Offerings
The logistics startup had initially struggled to counter investor scepticism, as niche logistics is challenging to handle in a country as vast as India with diverse demands. However, it managed to secure a $5.5 Mn Series A round in 2015 from Sequoia India and Southeast Asia (now known as Peak XV Partners), Kae Capital, and other storied investors. The early funding paved the path for its steady expansion as the startup entered new verticals and geographies.
In the beginning, Porter offered only two vehicle categories: 700 kg trucks (a notable example is the Tata Ace) and 1.4-1.5 tonne vehicles (such as the Bolero pickups). However, its core customer base includes MSMEs such as local furniture stores, hardware shops, ceramic and paint dealers, small-scale city manufacturers and more. These businesses account for 85% of Porter’s revenue, and given the diverse range of their products, their logistics requirements vary accordingly.
Understandably, not all of them needed 700 kg or 1.5 tonne vehicles. Sometimes, they required larger trucks, and at other times, only a two-wheeler for deliveries as small as 2-5 kg, which are typically small items often delivered by florists or bookshops. Even a furniture store may want to transport flat-packed items or décor pieces that do not warrant a full truck. Therefore, Porter expanded its offerings to include two-wheelers, addressing the full spectrum of Intracity logistics.
Going forward, Porter will expand its vehicle offerings across categories. One interesting segment that Porter is developing is the e-loader, an electric cargo vehicle similar to the e-rickshaws but designed to carry 200-300 kg. The logistic unicorn aims to introduce this category in all cities.
“Currently, we offer payload options like 2.5 tonne and 3.5 tonne vehicles, although the latter is not available everywhere. We also have 4.5 tonne and 300 kg categories, many of which will be electric vehicles,” said Goel. “This is essential as we must become a one-stop shop for all on-demand Intracity logistics needs.”
The insight drove the startup to build a more nuanced range of vehicle categories and service offerings. Even its packers-and-movers vertical stemmed from this demand. People who were relocating approached Porter for vehicle support, but many of them also required packaging and loading-unloading services. It led to the creation of the B2C-focussed service category for a pan-India market.
Porter continued to listen to its customers and expanded its offerings to include intercity courier and parcel services. Customers who were using the platform for packers and movers often required it, and the business responded with tailored solutions.
“This is what we mean by going deeper,” chuckled Goel. “If a customer is already ordering from you 10 times a month, you need to think how to make that 20.”
Asset Utilisation Has Powered Porter’s Rise
When Porter was launched in mid-2014 with just one customer, it was in no rush to grow at any cost, a typical startup syndrome that industry experts often criticise. Instead, it built its tech stack cog by cog and made strategic decisions to validate its core business thesis, one that initially drove it to solve a critical logistics pain point — the problem of asset utilisation.
Its early surveys revealed that most intracity trucks were making 1.5 trips a day instead of the optimum five. Therefore, Porter’s goal was to take that number to three trips a day, a jump in asset utilisation from 30% to 60%.
The startup took a couple of years to reach that point. But when data revealed that the top 10% of Porter drivers were hitting that target — and later, the top 20% — the founders knew they were on the right track.
“As soon as the first few drivers hit three trips a day, we knew that our hypothesis was working. It is not enough to develop a business idea on paper or spreadsheet. The real test is whether it works in the real world. With paying customers and engaged driver-partners, we had solid proof that we were delivering on our promises,” observed Goel.
Of course, the journey was not a sprint. Moving from 1.5 to 3 trips per day meant growing gradually —from 1.5 to 1.7, then 2, 2.3, 2.5, and eventually 3. That upward trend gave them the confidence to persist.
“There were times in the first five years or so when equity investors did not find our business model very attractive. In fact, many of our competitors either changed their business models or pivoted. But Porter never did that. The data kept us grounded, and we stayed the course,” said Goel.
Its revenue and growth trajectory have been just as methodical and consistent as its product journey. The revenue model has been unchanged and straightforward since Day One, and the startup reached INR 100 Cr by FY18.
As a principal service provider, Porter maintains direct relationships with its customers rather than acting as an aggregator and bills them directly. It means if a customer books a trip from Porter for INR 100, the startup gets a revenue share, while the driver-partner receives the rest. Also, a driver is solely responsible for executing a trip.
As of now, driver compensation is Porter’s biggest expenditure. It also covers head office expenses, marketing, servicing costs, billing operations and other overheads. As Porter scales and its order volume grows, its business model continues to thrive steadily.
Of Challenges And The Journey Ahead
Porter competes with players like LetsTransport, a truck aggregator, and Borzo India, which focusses on intracity deliveries. But no other company has matched its diversification or scale until now. Interestingly, deep-pocketed competitors like Uber are now entering the B2B logistics space and planning to expand their partnerships with ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) to foray into food delivery, ecommerce delivery, groceries, pharmacy products and more.
Goel is not overly alarmed. He had already seen the market getting flooded with new players, but soon, there was consolidation, giving Porter a relatively clear run. “That was partly because very few believed this market would scale. Now, our success and market evolution are drawing new competition,” he said.
Additionally, the Indian logistics market is expected to grow to $159.5 Bn by FY28 at a CAGR of 8-9%, according to a recent report by Motilal Oswal. The domestic express logistics segment is projected to grow even faster, at a 14% CAGR, driven primarily by the expansion of ecommerce and quick commerce. Porter and peers will be keen to stay ahead of this growth curve, and the former has already proved its mettle.
But what matters most is Porter’s unwavering focus on the SME sector, and linking them to ecommerce and quick commerce platforms can result in a big revenue surge.
Despite an ambitious roadmap and a well-structured operational plan, Porter’s success hinges on overcoming some key obstacles. To begin with, scaling EV adoption across diverse geographies will require setting up reliable charging networks and providing cost-effective financing options for driver-partners, according to an early investor in Porter, who did not wish to be named. Convincing drivers — especially those from lower-income brackets — to transition to EVs could be a significant hurdle.
Competition in last-mile logistics will also intensify. As Porter expands its presence to multiple cities and its customer base of small and medium-sized enterprises, it will face pressure from deep-pocketed competitors and emerging hyperlocal startups. These rivals are targeting the same SMEs and EV-driven logistics opportunities, putting additional strain on the startup’s operational resilience.
Balancing service quality, driver satisfaction and profitability while scaling at pace will require a delicate balancing act.
“For the last five years, Porter was the only company formalising the logistics space in India. But as new entrants with substantial resources join the fray, it will likely face an evolving, competitive landscape. This will make Porter’s next five years crucial for disciplined execution and strategic vision,” he noted.
Conversely, it will help the industry mature more quickly and become more structured, where only the best can thrive. How Porter handles the new landscape will depend on how it navigates the new grind.
Source: www.inc42.com
