Haulio, a Singaporean container haulage startup, was named the winner of PITCH 2019 at the RISE tech conference in Hong Kong this week.
PITCH is a live competition where early stage startups exhibiting at the RISE conference go head to head for the “Best Startup” title. This year, around half of the 777 participating startups applied to be part of the competition, but only 60 were selected to present at the PITCH stage in front of some of Asia’s high profile investors.
“Winning PITCH is validation for our business,” said Alvin Ea, the co-founder of Haulio.
Haulio is a seed stage startup founded in 2017 with the aim of solving inefficiencies in the haulage industry.
“Containers are so big but people don’t actually notice them. We’re trying to bring to the world stage something that is hidden to many people. PITCH can help bring our company to the world stage and let people know this a problem worth solving,” Ea added.
Ea said that workers in haulage were suffering as industry leaders tried to transform their business but were unsure how to proceed as they didn’t really understand tech.
“There’s not many startups in the logistics industry for cargos,” Ea said after winning the competition.
Haulio’s business-to-business (B2B) platform utilizes the on-demand concept. It is a marketplace that matches hauliers with customers who need help with moving containers. This is in contrast to the conventional arrangement, where end-customers and freight forwarders contacted hauliers directly to arrange for transportation.
Last year’s winner for PITCH was Vietnamese trucking startup Logivan.