FROM two friends meeting in a boarding school in the UK, to being named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Jai Kanwar and Clemente Theotokis have had a meteoric rise in the logistics sector.
When they created Zeus Labs (Zeus) in 2019, their plan was to modernise one of the most traditional sectors of the global economy – transport and logistics.
The company has gone on to become one of Europe’s fastest-growing logistics technology companies, helping businesses take control of their supply chains and drive efficiencies in logistics management.
In an interview with Eastern Eye, Kanwar recalled how while living together during their time at university, he and Theotokis mapped out a plan on how they would use technology to modernise an industry.
“We have tech all around us in our daily lives – you want a car, you want food, you use technology. We were looking at industries that didn’t necessarily have technology, but could use it and we came quite quickly across the trucking industry,” Kanwar said.
Kanwar, 26, said their initial research involved driving around the UK and cold walking into the offices of large trucking companies. “We would just knock on the door and say, ‘can we ask you some questions?’” he said.
“We’d see desktops and laptops, so there was technology in the offices. However, quite a lot of these trucking companies were still working off a blackboard with chalk and map with pins in it to decide which truck is going where, what customer they’re picking up from, and when they’re even doing the jobs.“That was really the inflection point for us, where we decided this is a space where we can really make some change from a tech perspective.”
Kanwar and Theotokis identified a need for innovative technology to transform the movement of freight by enhancing efficiency, minimising costs and reducing environmental impact.
They felt the logistics industry was ‘lagging from a digitisation perspective’.
The company’s early work stemmed from data that showed that 30 per cent of European trucks run empty on a day-today basis, which is the equivalent of one million trucks running completely empty across Europe every day.
Their first product, Freight Connect, launched in August 2020, offers a matching platform where Zeus works with large manufacturers such as Procter and Gamble or Decathlon and matches them to truckers signed up on to the platform.
It allowed small trucking companies to take on contracts with large manufacturers, boosting business opportunities.
“The trucking industry is dominated by companies with fewer than five trucks. These are family owned-businesses. For them, getting access to work with very large businesses and that too with recurring revenue, is unheard of,” said Kanwar.
“Our focus was on getting large contracts from manufacturers and then essentially passing them on to the trucker.”
From supporting truckers with Freight Connect, Zeus launched their second product, Freight Command, with a focus on manufactures.
Zeus is among Europe’s fastest-growing logistics technology companies
“We were able to not only identify a lot of pain points that manufacturers face, but also identify and build relationships with the right stakeholders within those businesses, in order to approach them for our second platform,” said Kanwar.
“Freight Command is a way for large manufacturers to manage all of their suppliers in one place. If, for example, I am Procter and Gamble, I’m working with at least 100 different suppliers per year, and being able to house them in one place (digital platform) is much more efficient in actually being able to track and distribute your freight.”
“A lot of large manufacturers have many systems in place, and what Zeus does is we almost plug in to their existing tech stack to make sure that all of their systems talk to each other.
“There’s a big issue in the manufacturer space when it comes to siloed systems, a lot of systems don’t talk to each other, and the data is skewed, to some extent. That is something we are very focused on tackling, at the moment.” Zeus currently operational in around 15 countries and the company has completed more than 20,000 full truckload (FTL) shipments, to date.
In February 2024, the company secured a large contract with public thirdparty logisitics provider, Wincanton, which acquired exclusive UK and Ireland software rights for Freight Connect and Freight Command.
The year was topped off with Kanwar and Theotokis being named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Class of 2024 in the Manufacturing and Industry category.
“That was amazing for us, it was a huge honour,” said Kanwar.
“It’s opened so many doors for us, we’ve met so many new people by being named in the 30 Under 30.”
Kanwar’s plan is to now take Zeus to a global market.
“We have been looking into the Middle East, as well as India, where we have closed a few customers already,” he said.
Kanwar was born in Miami, spent his childhood in New Delhi before moving to London where he attended Charterhouse school, King’s College and was a student at the London School of Economics.
He has knowledge of the Indian market, thanks to his family business – Apollo Tyres. “My family come from a tyre manufacturing background – it’s actually now into the third generation of tyre manufacturer in India,” said Kanwar.
“I have grown up with that business mindset and these heroes in my life – my father and my grandfather – I’ve always looked up to them and learned from them.
“That’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to start a business and almost prove to everybody that I also have that business mind.”
Kanwar said his family was supportive of his plans. “Everybody’s proud, to some extent, about me exploring and learning how to run a business.”
“I will never be satisfied until I have reached whatever goal I have in my head, when it comes to Zeus. My goal in life is not only to make my family proud, but to make myself proud and I have to take that responsibility on my own.”
