Blockchain In Supply Chain Management Use Case #12: dexFreight
This interview is part of our new Blockchain In Supply Chain Management series, where we interview the world’s leading thought leaders on the front lines of the intersections between blockchain and supply chain management.
In this interview we speak with Rajat Rajbhandari, Co-founder of dexFreight, to understand how his company is using blockchain to transform the supply chain management business, and what the future of the industry holds.
1. What’s the story behind dexFreight. Why and how did you begin?
RR: Hector and I happened to be firm believers of blockchain’s disruptive potential in transforming logistics and supply chain and we come from a strong background of logistics and academia. We met each other during the inaugural event of the Blockchain in Transport Alliance where we realized that we have a common vision of decentralizing logistics to eliminate pain points in the industry. Few months after the event, we decided to start a project and began to work on a white paper, which was released in August 2018. We huddled several other co-founders and early investors on the way and began to work on a MVP.
2. Please describe your use case and how dexFreight uses blockchain:
RR: Logistics is a multi-trillion $ industry and broken down into several sub domains. Our current use case is focused around increasing efficiency and reducing the cost of “over the road trucking” in the US domestic market, as first phase. The industry is not only fragmented and has many non-value added intermediaries with huge back office cost to balance demand and supply. Movement of a shipment involves multiple companies that needs transparency and visibility of provenance of documents, milestones, and other activities until the shipment is delivered and settled. dexFreight at the moment uses hybrid architecture of cloud and Bitcoin blockchain using Rootstock to manage contracts between the parties. Shipment related provenance, milestones, reputation, and settlement are managed using smart contracts. dexFreight will then transition to a fully decentralized platform, a Web 3 tokenized business model.
3. Could you share a specific customer/user that benefits from what you offer? What has your service done for them?
RR: Shippers and carriers can transact and move shipments with less than market cost due to reduced administrative cost, get paid much faster using invoice collateralized lending, reduce the need for companies to wait for invoices in order to get paid. Current state of the industry is that 9 out of 10 invoices have errors, and more.
4. What other blockchain use cases in supply chain management are you excited about?
RR: We are excited about several projects related to cross-border tokenized payments being tested by fintech, decentralized dispute resolution, sovereign identity which allows us to reduce fraud and stolen shipments, data federation, etc.
5. Where will dexFreight be in 5 years?
RR: Our strategy is to scale first and decentralize later. In five years, dexFreight will be a fully decentralized platform built on several types of tokens (security, work) to monetize the network. We are building the platform for US domestic open market for truck load and drayage. We will continue to develop it for less than truck load, contract market and incorporate other modes of transport such as air, maritime, rail etc. and also implement the platform in other countries especially, Latin America, Europe, Middle East.
Source: by Emilia Picco — Disruptor Daily https://www.disruptordaily.com/blockchain-in-supply-chain-management-use-case-dexfreight/
