1) What is exactly that you do, and what is your start up about?
I’m the C.E.O. and founder of Trampo Technologies. Trampo Technologies is a logistics company that leverages technology to enable businesses to become supply chain efficient.
2) What is the problem that your start up is trying to resolve?
The high cost of logistics in Africa is due to the fragmentation and inefficiencies in the sector, and as a result, large numbers of small business owners are unable to grow their companies because of the high overheads connected with distributing or sourcing their goods.
3) What inspired you to start this particular business?
I’m an Accountant turned entrepreneur. I previously worked with Cellulant Uganda before joining Famunera as a C.F.O. While at Famunera, we faced challenges in finding reliable logistical services to deliver Farm Inputs and agricultural produce of our farmers. This motivated me to start Trampo.
4) When was your start- up founded? What stage is your start-up currently at?
Trampo was founded in 2020 and is in the early seed stage.
5) Are you the sole founder? If not, how did your team meet? Who does what on your team?
Yes. I’m a solo founder.
6) What is your start-up Business model, and how does it work?
We currently charge a service fee for each successful delivery. This is charged to the Drivers.
With the integration of payments within our platforms, we will earn transaction fees for payments facilitated through our platforms.
We also intend to charge subscription fees for users to access transport data and insights.
5) What exactly differentiates you from your competitor in the marketplace? Can you name a few?
We are B2B2C focused and hence provide a wide range of Truck sizes for all businesses; ranging from 1-30T capacities.
Our competitors are Lori Systems, Kobo360 and Trella in North Africa.
6) At what stage is your start up currently at? (Early-stage, growth stage, established)
Early stage.
7) Can you discuss any significant milestones that your start-up achieved so far?
Founded, first hires and launched the first MVP in November.
2020 Alibaba GET Challenge Top 10 Finalists
Signed up over 200 users and 100 Truckers in 2021.
Joined the Venturecrush FGPod accelerator 2022 Cohort.
2022, Youth Startup Academy 2022 accelerator top 10 finalists.
Nominated for Tech Startup of the Year 2022, Uganda Innovation Week and Startup Uganda.
2023, expansions to Kenya and Rwanda.
Exhibited at GITEX 2023.
8) Can you provide some information about your target market and its size?
Our Primary customer segments are those in the informal sector and comprise micro, Small, Medium, Enterprises (MSMEs). They are mainly traders [Exporters and Importers], agro-processors, and constructors, among others. They are regarded as the engine of growth and economic development.
9) How do you acquire customers or users, and what is your customer acquisition strategy?
We use a mix of Online and Offline marketing methods to grow our customer base.
In this digital era, it is important to maximize the use of Digital marketing is key to attracting new users and retaining old ones by constantly communicating our value. We do this through our social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
10) What are your main revenue streams?
Truck hire services.
11) Have you received any funding or investment for your start-up? If yes, can you share the details?
Not yet.
12) How do you plan to scale your business in the future?
Our plan to scale is through partnerships, direct entry and launch in new markets and Mergers and acquisitions.
13) What are the biggest challenges you have faced so far, and how did you overcome them?
Fines and penalties for overloading. We decided to collect data on actual goods and quantities to avoid extra costs due to traffic penalties and fines.
Achieving sustainability through managing cash flow we started to serve large clients who transport large volumes of products frequently.
14) How will you measure success for your start-up or the achievements that your startup has reached?
By using financial and non-financial metrics. Financial metrics include; Profit margins per delivery job, customer lifetime value, and monthly and Average recurrent revenue. Non-financial metrics include; User retention, product reliability, inquiries made, distance covered in delivery, carbon emissions saved, number of customers served, number of users [active and inactive], etc.
15) How do you prioritize and manage your resources, such as time and budget?
Being a small team with limited resources, we emphasize putting resources where we can achieve immediate results that impact the business.
16) What is your marketing and branding strategy?
There is currently a preference for organic marketing and growth channels due to limited finances.
This will be supplemented by paid acquisition for viral growth with funding.
17) How did customers/users find out about you?
Our customers found out about us from our marketing and field teams, which we sent out to interact with potential customers and introduce our services to them.
We also actively exhibit at business events.
Some customers also got to find us through social media.
18) What is your target audience?
Our Primary customers segments are those in the informal sector and comprise Micro, Small, Medium, Enterprises (MSMEs). They are mainly traders [Exporters and Importers], agro-processors and constructors, among others. They are regarded as the engine of growth and economic development.
19) Regarding your Marketing strategy, do you use Social media, and if so, is it in-house or outsourced?
Yes, we have a social media strategy. It is outsourced.
20) Have you faced any regulatory challenges?
Yes, when transporting client goods across the border.
21) Can you discuss any partnerships or collaborations you have established?
Partnership with Harven, who are Specialists in quality cold chain data services including temperature, time, location, and ID. Harven provides a new cold chain delivery system using its own technology, a powerless temperature sensor and a low power data logger.
A Partnership with The Innovation Village, which offered free office space for our team to work from.
22) What are the key things about your industry that outsiders don’t understand or misperceive?
Pricing in logistics is largely influenced by both software and hardware infrastructure factors. This is evidenced by the fact that the cost of transport has not been largely affected despite the heavy investment in physical infrastructure.
23) How do you handle feedback and incorporate it into your product or service development?
Our product development process involves taking feedback from interactions with customers.
Our field teams collect this feedback and share it with
24) What is the biggest missing feature, meaning the one thing that customers/users keep asking for?
Aggregated trucking or truck sharing feature
25) Are you going to internationalize? If so, how are you planning to expand internationally?
Yes. Organic expansion through acquiring clients first and serving them in their markets, rather than launching without clients.
26) Can you share any testimonials or success stories from your customers or users?
To be shared later
27) How do you ensure the security and privacy of users’ data?
We have a number of measures, such as password protection with authentication, among others.
28) How do you stay updated on industry trends and adapt your strategies?
I’m constantly reading, learning from peers, industry leaders, and attending training and seminars on industry-related content.
29) Are there any patents or trademarks associated with your start-ups?
No
30) Can you discuss your pricing strategy and how you determine your product’s value?
We use customer data such as; Truck type, size and distance of delivery to determine prices.
31) How do you plan to build and maintain customer loyalty?
We collect and analyze user data to be used to develop customized user data for marketing purposes.
32) What are your plans for expanding your team in the future?
We will expand our team organically on a needs basis.
33) Can you provide examples of any social or environmental initiatives your startup is involved in?
We are part of Rotaract Kampala, South, which is involved in the restoration of Mangroove forests in Malindi and Building a school library in western Uganda.
34) How Do you approach customer support and handle any issues or complaints?
We set up a call center where all issues were raised. We also welcome feedback through our social media channels.
All issues raised are investigated, communicated and addressed to the reporter.
35) What have you learned so far from launching your start-up, and what pointers would you give a person reading this blog who is interested in having a start-up of his own?
The world has so many problems; each problem requires a solution, but only a few have been solved. We can only create the world we want if we get out and build the solutions needed.
36) Six months from now, what will be the biggest problem?
Quality service management and standards.
37) Are you looking to hire new employees on your team? If so, what job openings do you currently have?
Yes. a C.T.O. (1), Driver engagement and Fulfillment Associates (2).
38) Are you looking for start-seed investment or VC funding? If you are looking for funding, where can potential investors contact you?
Yes, we are raising our seed round of $100,000 in either debt or equity.
We can be reached by email at joel.ojema@trampotechnologies.com, admin@trampotechnologies.com , Twitter @Trampotech or LinkedIn @Trampotechnologies.
39) How did COVID affect your start up?
COVID-19 affected most clients, especially those in the import, export industry and manufacturing.
Measures imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19 affected production cycles, trade and distribution of goods.
40) How is Artificial Intelligence (AI) affecting your industry and your company?
AI is helping turn routines into proactive activities, helping traders, businesses and operators anticipate market behaviors.
AI is specifically used in; Trend forecasting, automated warehousing, coordination and optimization of Transport.
This is helping to mitigate costs, increase efficiency and profitability.
41) Why should we feature you on our blog?
It is a great platform for the visibility of our brand and services across especially in the MENA region that we target to scale to.
42) How did you hear about our blog?
Bob Debbas reached out via email after GITEX 2023.
CaseFox Timekeeping and Billing Software is designed to help attorneys, virtual firms, accountants and other professionals (such as freelancers, contractors, etc.) with their timekeeping, invoicing, trust accounting, time tracking, case tracking and client billing needs.
We had an in-depth and lengthy interview with Mr. “Rajeev Madnawat”; Founder and CEO of the US (Milpitas, California)-based start-up “http://www.casefox.com” about his Company.
As per Mr. Madnawat; CaseFox Timekeeping and Billing Software is designed to help attorneys, virtual firms, accountants and other professionals (such as freelancers, contractors, etc.) with their timekeeping, invoicing, trust accounting, time tracking, case tracking and client billing needs. CaseFox can track both billable and non-billable hours and expenses, monitor unbilled hours, late payments and handle trust accounting, case documents and case notes.
Your contract attorneys and independent contractors can directly enter their billable time and expenses in your CaseFox account without being able to see any other data. CaseFox uses SSL for security and critical user data in stored in the encrypted form in our databases. Generating invoices is easy (click one button and invoices for all clients and cases (projects) are ready) and based on previously unbilled time/expenses.
Easy to use and understand interface. CaseFox offers simplified time/expense tracking to track billable and non-billable time/expenses. Time entry records are automatically used for creating invoices. Export entered time data and case notes to Excel and PDF format. User friendly display layout of entered time/expense data. Easy to use simplified and common screen for entering notes, expenses and time tracking data. Simply click of “Add Note (Time/Expense)” links to enter a note, time or expense. Configure different hourly rates for different cases. Support for fix fees billing.
Timekeepers in your firm will access CaseFox using their own user name and password. You can also create separate logins for your contract attorneys (so you need not enter their billable hours for them). A contract attorney can only enter his/her own time/expense and view only his own data. A normal staff can view client/case info, entered time by other users/timekeepers and may enter time/expense for other users, but cannot manage users, trust account or case/client or view/generate invoices. Admin role provides full access.
CaseFox provides various advantages over the use of in-house installed time and billing software. First, you don’t need to manage hardware/software and making sure data is properly backedup. Second, unlike your in-house system, you don’t need to upgrade hardware or software. Further, CaseFox is available 24/7 from anywhere and the cost of using CaseFox is very low compared to your in-house installation and the time you have to spend on managing it.
The time you spend on managing, maintaining, backing up and upgrading may be coming from your billable hours and as a result may be costing you a whole lot more than just the licensing fees. CaseFox is designed to be intuitive and easy to use. There is nothing to install or upgrade. We continuously upgrade CaseFox and upgrades are automatically and transparently offered to users.
If you are a solo professional or a small/medium/virtual firm, you may be hiring contract workers (e.g., contract attorneys) from time to time (if not today, you might do so tomorrow as your practice/business grows).
CaseFox is a multi-user system that provides role based access to data. Just like staff members of your firm, your contract workers can also login (using their own user id/password) into your CaseFox account and enter their time and expenses. These contract worker users will not see any other data in your CaseFox account.
You can convert a staff user to a contract contract user and vice versa with just one click. Generating invoices is easy (CaseFox even offers automatic bulk invoice creation, click one button and invoices for all clients and cases will be created automatically). The previously entered time/expense data is automatically used for generating invoices. Invoices can be emailed to clients with just one click. You can also export your client list, case list and entered time data into Excel files. All in all, you will find CaseFox very friendly and time/money saving system.
Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. Madnawat regarding his start-up “Casefox.com”;
1. What is it exactly that you do and what “CaseFox” is all about?
CaseFox provides a feature rich, easy to use and affordable Web-based software for handling timekeeping and invoicing. CaseFox can be used by attorneys, law firms, virtual firms, accountants and other professionals that provides services to their clients.
2. When has “CaseFox” been founded? And what stage is “CaseFox” currently at?
CaseFox.com was started in 2011. CaseFox is now serving clients worldwide.
3. What is “CaseFox” business model and how does it work?
CaseFox business model is a “freemium” model. We offers a fully functional free plan that our clients can use in a productive environment (upto a certain number of cases/projects) to get comfortable with the application. CaseFox offers affordable paid plans.
4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?
The application was designed jointly by attorneys and engineers. A professional software development company with huge experience in Web technologies developed the application. In-house engineers then took over to added more features and to smooth out rough corners.
5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?
CaseFox user interface is designed for easy use. Users do not need to go from one screen to another to perform tasks. All information (case notes, time/expense entries, etc.) remains on the screen to easy case tracking. Built-in filters let a user quickly look time/expense tracking data by a client, case (project) or user. CaseFox also offers role based access to data. Different types of user roles have different authorizations. CaseFox also offers a one click bulk invoice generation. That is, all invoices for all clients and cases (projects) are automatically created with just one click. Moreover, unlike most competitors, we don’t charge extra based on the number of users/timekeepers.
6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “CaseFox” achieved so far?
We are experiencing an organic growth. We hardly spending any money on advertising. In the last three months alone, about 400 new clients have signed up. Our goal is to sign up about 1000 users by the end of this year.
7. Who are your competitors?
Main competitors are Bill4Time.com and Freshbooks.com.
8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?
We have had highly experienced people working on the team. We did not face any substantial obstacle during the development phase. Our main obstacle (which is really an obstacle for every SaaS provider) is to educate potential clients who are accustomed to using desktop applications that Web-based applications provide better functionality, service and at least equal data security.
9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?
That an invoice application is different from a timekeeping and invoicing application. A pure invoicing application (generally suitable for product sales) does not offer timekeeping functions and not suitable for professionals that bill their time and labor to their clients. A timekeeping and invoicing app generates invoices based on previously logged time/expenses.
10. Why are you going to succeed?
We have a good quality product that is easy to use and provides good functionality. Our subscription plans are affordable and straight forward and we offer a full featured, no obligation free plan.
11. If “CaseFox” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?
At present, we plan to continue focusing on timekeeping and invoicing area only and to continue improving our software based on user feedback and market analysis.
12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “CaseFox” based on?
The idea originated from the painful use of difficult to use, expensive and antiquated timekeeping and invoicing systems (mostly desktop applications).
13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?
That it is important to think like an actual user before designing any product.
14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?
We don’t expect any signification problems in the coming six months. We will continue to sign up more users and continue to provide our best services to all our users.
15. What’s the benefit for the user?
Ease of use, good feature set without any bells and whistles. Affordability.
16. How did customers and/or users find out about you?
Mostly through Internet searches.
17. Who are your current users? Who are your target users?
Most of our users are lawyers and law firms and accountants. We do have other types of professionals as users, such as book-keepers, expert witnesses, design consultants, freelance code writers, etc. Other than some terminology used in the application and some features (such as Trust Accounting) that are useful only to attorneys, the application is equally useful for any professional that bills his/her clients for his/her labor and cost.
18. Where do new users come from and what makes new users try you?
CaseFox.com receives users from all over the world, even from the countries that we have never heard of. We believe that the feature set and easy sign-up attract new visitors to try the service.
19. What do your users say about your product and/or service?
Our users always appreciate the ease of use of the application.
20. How are you going to scale?
Our system design permits easy scaling. We will simply add more server when a need arises.
21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers keep asking for?
Although we do provide import and export data functionality, CaseFox does not integrate directly with any other software (other than Google for single sign on and syncing tasks). Some of our users have asked for a QuickBooks integration. We are researching the topic. Our biggest issue is that most of these accounting software are not designed for service professionals.
22. Are you going to internationalize?
Perhaps. We may provide a feature to produce invoices in local languages.
23. How big do you think you can get?
We will be trying to collaborate with established leaders for joint and cross selling opportunities by complementing each other’s product offerings. We have also been approached by an industry leader for a potential buyout. It is difficult to provide a solid figure as to how big we can get.
24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?
We are fully staff at present.
25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?
Yes. Interested parties can contact us at the following email address: service@casefox.com
26. Finally, what advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?
Research the market fully and understand user requirements to minute details before rolling out a product. Have good customer service.
