We Won TIA’s Technovations’ Shark Tank Competition; Now What?

For the first time in the history of TIA’s Shark Tank competition, the same company was awarded both the Judges and People’s Choice Awards at the 2024 Technovations Conference. The company, Drumkit, was recognized for its practical use of artificial intelligence (AI) in making the everyday life of brokers easier. The competition, which is based on the popular TV show, offers four startup companies the opportunity to present their product to a panel of judges from the 3PL industry.

Using AI, Drumkit acts as a virtual employee that takes over mundane actions so your team can spend its time focusing on relationships with your partners. Drumkit can help at every step in the load life cycle: automating quoting, load building, scheduling and tracking. This helps brokers make their staff more productive, more competitive and less stressed.

Dhruv Gupta, second from left, celebrates with the Shark Tank judges winning the People’s Choice Award and the Judges Award.

Drumkit’s AI helps speed up the quoting process for companies.

Drumkit makes logistics feel like magic, so brokers can focus on decisions, not actions.

AI Is More Than a Buzzword

I understand the hesitation around AI—a buzzword full of incredible possibilities and false promises. The reality, however, is that AI isn’t going to take over logistics; rather, it will enable tools and workflows (like Drumkit) that weren’t possible a couple of years ago. When evaluating AI tools, look for those that solve a real problem, with and without AI.

AI is just an instrument in your band, and it’s not even the front man. If someone’s claiming AI will replace your job, they’re over-selling. The best use of AI is for taking over busywork, not making decisions.

In fact, this was an overarching drumbeat at this year’s Technovations. Nearly all our fellow competitors and presenters were tackling the same problems from different angles. It’s a clear trend: Surrounded by fraud and a down market, brokers no longer want to be bogged down by data entry and toil.

Underscoring the enthusiasm, the Shark Tank judges, Andrew Silver, John Gamero and Kevin Nolan, wanted to make sure competitors focused on proving lasting return on investment with automation. It’s not just a fad. Automation, AI and process simplification are here. It’s a glass-shattering vision of the future.

Get Back to Your Core Business With AI-Enabled Tools

At Drumkit, we are rethinking a broker’s day-to-day priorities. We know the difference between a good brokerage and a damn good brokerage is in the relationships you’ve built. Drumkit can help you focus on that instead of spending time doing data entry or sending emails.

With Drumkit, you never have to leave your inbox to perform an action. At its core, Drumkit is an integration tool. We plug into your transportation management system, rating tools, scheduling portals and even tracking tools. With AI, we pull in relevant information from these tools so you can trigger all the actions you need from one place.

On top of a tough market, fraud has gotten out of control. Modern problems require modern solutions. We are grateful to integrate with tools like Highway, MyCarrierPortal, RMIS and (soon) FreightValidate. Whenever you have correspondence with a carrier, Drumkit can identify, through our partners, whether that carrier is in your network and operating compliantly. That way, you don’t have to be constantly on guard; we’ll let you know if something gets off the ground.

Drumkit makes logistics feel like magic, so brokers can focus on decisions, not actions.

Real Solutions Born From a Passion for Logistics

We are incredibly grateful to the TIA community. We’ve built Drumkit over the last year or so specifically for a few design partners. To be acknowledged not only by experienced judges and founders but also by the audience is very validating. We believe that building for one means we can expand what we’re building out to everyone and arm as many brokers as we can with tools that help them run their businesses better.

The recognition has also helped us get our brand out there. Many firms reaching out to us say they heard about us through the TIA grapevine. It’s great to see the community get excited about our work.

In addition, we’re proud to help brokers change the rhythm of their operations. On stage, Nolan asked how we got into logistics, joking, “There’s no way you were on the bus in seventh grade thinking you’d be building software in logistics.” Honestly? I was that kid.

I started off just thinking that trains and trucks are cool. Eventually, I went to Harvard to study computer science and transportation planning, doing research in fleet optimization. My co-founder, Jinyan Zang, has a doctorate in data privacy and data networks from Harvard. We are passionate about using data to reinvent logistics, and we can’t wait to compose a new future.

Dhruv Gupta is the CEO of Drumkit.ai, based in Boston. Want to learn more or network with Gupta? You can reach him at dhruv@drumkit.ai.