Ease of moving

The pain and stress of shifting from one location to another due to the lack of professional movers and packers was the starting point for young business enthusiasts Aulina Mithal Sood and Sahil Mithal. Their start-up ShiftKarado was founded in 2015 with a mission to digitally transform the fragmented landscape of the industry. Moving of household goods, office relocation, and vehicle transportation are the major verticals which this start-up caters to. Currently hadquartered in Gurugram, it has branch offices in New Delhi, Faridabad, Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai. “We provide good quality standards for packing and moving services through an effective and completely transparent process,” says Aulina. As technology lies at the heart of ShiftKarado, we strive to facilitate the mobility through tech-oriented solutions, she adds.

Inspiration

Sahil, a computer science graduate from College of William & Mary, Virginia, USA, excelled in FIDI EiM (Essentials in Moving) course, which he pursued in Brussels and became well versed with the intensive knowledge of moving processes. After returning to India, he and Aulina  identified a gap between the demand and supply of skilled packers and movers in the country, which hindered the growth of the relocation market in India. “As unorganised players dominated the entire market, pricing and relocating process were opaque, time-consuming and challenging for the customers and this was inspiration enough to enter this segment,” says Sahil.

Achievements

“We are gaining huge popularity amongst our target customers with easy-to-use mobile app”, tells Aulina. Available on Android, the app downloads is increasing at a galloping rate. Last year, the company had presence only in Gurugram and Delhi, but now it is there in other prominent cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai. Northern region including cities like Chandigarh, Mohali, and NCR, including Gurgaon, Noida, Greater Noida, Faridabad, and Ghaziabad are also being covered by this start-up. “The western region coverage is all over Pune-Mumbai region, including Navi Mumbai. We have recently included Jaipur and Kolkata as well in our portfolio”, he shares. 

Challenges

During the early stages, forming a strong team was a huge challenge. “But soon we realised that we have to hire experienced and self-motivated people who can bring something special to the table every time,” says Aulina. Training different teams in managing all sorts of digital operations was another Herculean task, she adds.

Initially, the duo also faced challenges in getting the customer to input information about the move. “But we overcame this by providing intelligent templates that would auto-populate the information. We are now delivering thousands of instance prices with technology,” adds Sahil.

— As told to Geetu Vaid