Episode 62 - Akhil Kumar- Co-Founder & CEO of Movorra

In this episode of the Chicago Techies Podcast, I sat down with Akhil Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Mavorra, to talk about his journey from college student to entrepreneur and how he’s using AI to improve the transportation industry.

We explored how Akhil’s internship at a transportation company exposed him to inefficiencies in the quoting process, inspiring him to build Mavorra, an AI-powered solution designed to help transportation companies streamline their operations.

We also talked about the challenges of building a startup while balancing college, including time management, mental health, and the importance of having a strong support system. Akhil shared how Chicago’s startup community has helped shape his entrepreneurial journey and why mentorship and community are so valuable for young founders.

This episode is about entrepreneurship, AI, and solving real-world problems with technology. If you're interested in startups, transportation tech, or hearing from young founders building innovative solutions, this conversation is definitely worth a listen.

Connect with Akhil:

Akhil’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akhil-kumar-2779192a5/

Movorra website: https://www.movorra.ai/

Movorra LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/movorra/

Connect with Chicago Techies Podcast:

Website: https://chicagotechiespodcast.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chicago-techies-podcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chicagotechies

Connect with Ceci:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cbenitez87/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cbenitez_87

Hello.

Hello.

Welcome to season five of the Chicago Techies podcast.

The podcast that highlights the voices of Chicago techies and their experiences.

This season is all about Chicago talent, founders, operators, creatives and tech professionals who are building, growing and making things happen across the city.

I'm your host, Cecilia Benitez.

Thanks for joining us.

Hi, Akil.

Thank you for joining me on this week's episode of the Chicago Techies podcast.

How are you doing?

I'm doing good.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm super excited to be on.

Of course.

Yeah.

I know I just told everybody your name, but can you start by introducing yourself with your name, your pronouns and where you're from?

Yeah.

So my name is Akhil Kumar.

I'm a sophomore at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign studying computer science.

And I was born and raised in the Quad Cities in a town called Moline, Illinois.

So spent my whole childhood growing up there, went to Moline High School.

And my pronouns are he and him.

Okay, so let's hear your business.

Like, I know that you're the founder and CEO of your own startup, so I want to hear a little bit more about it for anyone that's hearing for the first time, what is your startup and then what problem are you solving?

Yeah, so our company's called Mavora and we're basically building software for ground transportation companies.

Right.

So think about charter bus companies, limo companies, airport shuttle companies.

A lot of manual busy work goes into running their day to day operations, which oftentimes, you know, prevents them from scaling and getting the kind of traffic, getting the kind of excellence that they're, they're trying to achieve.

Right.

And so we basically help kind of remove some of that busy work using modern technology.

And right now we're starting with the quoting aspect of these companies workflow.

And so we actually replace static forms with, you know, real time, dynamic, interactive, you know, conversational chats where customers can get real time quotes via multi omnichannel, such as, you know, text messages, emails, phones and website so that people can book trips from any channel, anytime and anywhere.

Nice.

So when you, what prompted the idea, like what was the original inspiration for you to build Mobora?

Where did the idea come from and how did you start building?

Yeah, that's a good question.

So I mean this specific industry we're in is pretty niche, but when, you know, I had like a couple years back had interned at a transportation company.

And so I come from a building background.

I've loved building since a kid, you know, translated that into my computer Science degree here at Illinois.

But I was tasked building a very small kind of agent prototype for this specific company.

Right.

So like a lot of different transportation companies, technology is not at the forefront of what they do in a day to day.

And so I kind of came in as an intern and I was here to build a very small kind of AI agent to help the customer service team with kind of querying data as they receive, you know, calls, right?

So they could ask this agent how many books or how many trips have they booked?

Or they could ask this agent, know, how long has this customer been working with us and things like that.

And the customer service team could immediately give those responses over the, over the phone.

And so, you know, throughout my summer there, I noticed the operations and how things began to work.

I started to learn that drivers were coming in and filling out manual timesheets as per using a software platform.

I started to learn that quotes were, you know, drafted by hand and sent via email, sent over phone call.

And so I started to pick up on a lot of these things.

And you know, as a curious kid interning at this company, it started to kind of come to me that, hey, this is how this company is running their entire operations.

Like there's not a lot of software here.

And coming from a building background, I could see, you know, where these gaps could be filled.

And so I had kind of, you know, I did my internship at this company and I didn't do much after that.

But this kind of always, you know, started to be in the back of my mind as something that could be solved.

And so I had worked then at another startup, gained a little bit of experience, and then kind of when I learned, you know, how this kind of works, I went, did some research and then built an MVP and brought it to that same company at Internet and it actually became our first client.

That's, that's really cool.

It, it really sounds like you've just kind of been iterating based on problems that you're solving that are essentially modernizing, right?

Like you just continue to build on what you're learning at different startups to kind of get you to this point in offering this kind of service.

And now with AI, I'm assuming that you are using it and consider yourself an AI startup or how are you looking into that tech piece?

Like what do you consider yourself?

I know that this is not necessarily insure tech, this is not necessarily like a specific sector, but because you are doing quotes.

But how do you see your company as, do you see it as an AI startup or do you see it as a particular or transportation startup or how do you define it?

Yeah, so that's a good question, right?

If you look at the type of technology that our team builds, it's all AI related, right?

It's all based off of AI agents and that sort of new cutting edge technology.

Right.

But the way that we position ourselves is, I mean you can look at software that's being built today, right?

You can have AI agent companies that sit at the platform layer, right?

So we're talking about companies that allow you to build no code agents or allow you to use drag and drop workflows to create software on the spot, on the demand for any horizontal type of software.

Right?

We apply that same type of method, but we kind of advertise ourselves more as a business layer, as a business outcome type of company.

Right?

So you know, our core is technology.

We build AI agents, but the way that we perceive ourselves to the outside is, hey, we're a business partner type of company.

We're here to help you increase your revenue or help you increase your quote to bookie conversion and things like that.

And so while we are a startup, the way that we talk to these companies, the way that we sell to these companies comes from the core idea of, hey, you know, we want to go from end to end, right, from an idea to the business outcome.

And we're here to be a business partner to help you guys do and succeed, achieve whatever goals that you guys are as you're looking to kind of excel at.

I like how you're framing that like a business outcome startup.

I know that, you know, transportation and charter bus like industries, they're not necessarily the first place people think of when they hear like AI startup, right?

But, but I think I like the way that you're kind of framing these professional services around that.

I think that could be, that could be really interesting.

I am curious how the investment, like the investment folks, venture capitalists and all, how would they categorize it?

But I think it's really interesting what you're building and it's really cool.

Definitely motorizing the industry.

Well.

I think one of the first things that I was curious about is when you came to talk to us at 1 MC and present your startup, I was like, you're building a company while you're still in college.

That's wild.

One, how are you managing that?

Like, how are you managing your schoolwork?

How are you managing everything around you at school and then building this and starting to think about business models and your Investment strategy or just your team expansion?

How are you prioritizing everything?

Yeah, so that's a great question, right?

You're looking at like two full time jobs, trying to bash them into one day.

Right?

So.

Right.

You know, it all boils down to two specific things that I think help me succeed and also, you know, keep me motivated and keep my drive.

Right.

Number one, that comes at maintaining your health.

Right.

So that's definitely a top tier priority for me.

Mental and physical health.

Right.

So going to the gym, doing meditation, things like that.

Because when you have so much on your plate, you can get overwhelmed so fast.

Right?

But you still have to be able to stay, stay calm, you still have to be able to keep your composure and things like that.

So it starts off by maintaining, you know, health and then second is incredibly planned out and thorough time management.

Right.

So I start school in 10 days, right.

And so for me, I've already forecasted my entire semester because I know, like, hey, I have to squeeze in an hour or two here to work on the company or I have to squeeze in a couple hours of the weekend to research or learn about this specific thing.

Right.

And so, you know, bringing up to your point of how do I manage the team, how do I do all investment strategies and things like that?

I block out specific times just for learning.

Right.

And so I'll use AI tools, I'll watch YouTube videos, I'll talk to a lot of, you know, founders and mentors who will just teach me about these things.

Right.

Because as you're building a company, it's a very big learning process.

Especially for me, being a first time startup founder, I've founded nonprofits in high school.

But creating a startup, there's so many things that you don't really expect, right?

How do you build a team?

As you mentioned, how do you deal with investments?

What is the cap table, the legal stuff, ip, collecting data, all this type of stuff, Right.

I kind of consolidate that and throw that on the weekends.

I spend my time there learning about all that stuff.

During the weekdays, it's already planned out.

Every Sunday, I have the entire week planned out.

My classes end at this time, then the next four hours are dedicated for school and after that we have meetings for the company or whatever that may be.

So maintaining health, staying very disciplined on your time is very important.

So you have to be able to plan.

That's definitely a very important factor.

And then third, really utilizing weekends for learning to help you excel during the weekdays when you're actually executing some of those tasks.

Tasks yeah, well, I commend you for that because I definitely was not building anything when I was in, in school.

I was just trying to pass my classes.

But I, I appreciate to your point about like, you know, just managing your time and, and, and incorporating meditation to, to kind of center yourself.

I think that's really great.

I feel like a lot of, a lot of founders overlooked their mental health and overlooked like, how much, you know, support can that actually offer, like grounding yourself every day and just figuring out what you have ahead of the day, ahead of the week, ahead of the month.

I think that's something that is definitely something that I appreciate about, about this, about, about you.

But I, so I want to talk a little bit more about the product itself, so, so for folks to understand a little bit better.

So can you walk us through like what happens today when a charter or ground transportation company receives a custom and now how your company fits into that process so that it's easier for them to kind of get it, like, besides just hearing about the product itself.

Yeah.

So I mean, most of the transportation companies, they have different workflows, but if you talk from a high level hierarchy perspective, it basically works like this.

So you go in as a customer to their website typically.

So, you know, they'll have three specific channels.

Most people book, you know, charter quote forms or charter trip requests.

Right.

Let's say you want to, you know, book a charter bus to take your family, you know, from a specific location to a wedding destination, right.

You'll go on their website and you will basically fill out a form.

And that form will have basic itinerary details, right?

Such as your name, your phone number, your email, you know, your drop off location, pickup location and things like that.

Takes a couple of minutes to fill out.

You submit that form and then what ends up happening is that form then gets sent to a charter sales representative.

And so these transportation companies, these charter bus transportation companies have representatives and their entire job is to just take these requests and translate them into, you know, business revenue.

Right.

And so how do they actually do that?

Well, number one, they read whatever has came in, right.

And so they'll look at, okay, you've filled out the form, you gave us your, you know, pick up, your Chicago destination is Texas.

You want to go from this date to this day.

They'll manually figure out what is missing, right.

And what do they need in order to, you know, craft a specific price for this trip.

Right.

So one thing you will quickly recognize is you don't get a price back when you fill out that form.

It often takes a couple of days because of a couple of those problems where you don't have enough information, right?

So a sales rep is now sitting in the back office thinking about what information do I need to go ask this person next so that I have all of the specific details to create a quote for, you know, the customer.

So then they'll email their call back, spend days, you know, chasing them down, get the information, and then they'll create a price based off of, you know, availability, how much are the rates in that specific month, is there a driver available, location, destination, you know, things like that.

They'll create that, send that back to the customer, right?

You can probably expect this after a couple of days.

It's not a pretty fast process.

So send that back to the customer, and in that you'll have a quote for your trip.

And in that email, a customer can then respond to, hey, I'm interested in booking this trip.

Can we please proceed with this booking?

And so then the sales representative confirms it.

Oftentimes they draft up a contract.

After that they send the real contract.

And that involves a 10%, 20% down payment or a deposit to ensure that you're staying committed and loyal to the trip that you booked.

And that's kind of a high level of the current workflow that they run.

So a big problem looking from the customer side as well, the operation side is getting the quote to the customer is still a very tedious, still very manual process.

And from a customer's aspect, it's not the best experience for them.

But the problem is all the companies in the industry are running this way, right?

And so the way that Mavora fits in is we're using conversational AI.

So we've introduced this idea of conversational quoting into this industry where instead of filling out a static request form, you know, charter trips tend to be very complicated, right?

They can have 10, 15, sometimes even 20 different details.

And these vary between trip types, right?

And so right now, operators have one specific form for a bunch of different trip types, right?

Which, you know, defeats the purpose.

And so we basically replace that with a real time dynamic chat that's connected to an engine that understands and asks questions the same way a representative would, as if they were chasing down the customer on email, chasing down the customer on phone, and then it would ask those questions, gathered all the specific itinerary details, use the same pricing logic, use the same pricing format, and use intelligence to then draft up an estimated quote right there for the customer.

And so now, and we Draft an estimated quote right now, because we don't want the customer to commit to anything and we don't want the AI to just set a final stone price.

We always keep a human in the loop.

And so then it drafts a specific estimated quote and.

And then that quote gets sent to a charter sales representative and they can just approve it within 10 minutes, 15 minutes and send it right back out.

Right.

And so it solves a lot of those.

We're not able to, you know, give you the price upfront problems.

We're not able to deliver the quote fast enough.

Right.

So for some of these companies, speed does matter, right?

If you're not able to deliver a quote, competitor who has better technology or is able to deliver faster steals that revenue.

And when you're talking about trips that are worth thousands of dollars, this can add up to millions of dollars in a specific year.

Right.

And so for a lot of these sal, what we've seen in this industry is that information collection is the biggest problem that they're facing.

Right.

If they can get all this information up front, then they can create a quote and then they can serve their customer as fast as possible.

But currently the industry lags in that particular category.

And so we're able to actually replace that with the conversational chat on their website where in real time they can talk to it and act as if a representative booking a quote.

And we also expand that to other omnichannels, such as phone calls, such as texts, such as email write.

So let's say you're emailing instead of, you know, going on a website to book a trip.

We have an engine that automatically detect, you know, what specific details need to be asked next.

And we'll send an email back or we'll send a text message back, allowing the customer to book from anywhere, anytime, as well as allowing the back office team, right, the sales rep, to get back to the customer as fast as possible and provide a better experience.

And it also saves a lot of time for them, which directly correlates to an increase in revenue and being able to pump out more quotes in a more efficient and scalable manner.

So essentially you are cutting the time down to significant levels.

And except let's say somebody's asking for this online at like 11pm at night.

Obviously they're not going to see a quote until the next day, but you are cutting the kind of like that timeframe that it takes to essentially make the business happen.

But what is your market sizing like?

Did you do research on that?

What is your Potential market, market size that you're working with here, either Midwest or US or global.

Yeah.

So if you look at, you know, the US based charter industry, you can talk about, you know, tens of billions of dollars, 40 to 50 billion dollars of total industry.

So transportation is a pretty big sector in the US economy, which is why it's like 40 to 50 billion dollars.

When you're talking about software within the industry, it's not as big, but it still boils down to if you're looking globally, $20 billion and then maybe us between 5 and $10 billion.

But it is currently a growing industry and so the market is pretty big.

Our initial market that we had started at after a bunch of pivots and stuff was $5 billion in the US and now we expanded to charter because it was a larger market.

We started to gain more traction there.

And that goes anywhere from software being $10 billion to the entire industry, 40, $50 billion.

And some of these large charter companies generating between 40, 50, 100, $200 million a year in revenue.

So it's a pretty large industry in the economy.

Do you have already a couple of customers?

Yeah.

So as I've mentioned, we are implementing and working with our company that I actually interned at.

And so that became the first company.

And so there we refined our product, you know, worked, worked with them to really understand the workflow.

That was kind of the main consensus of that.

And then we also implemented another company.

And so these two companies we did free of cost.

And then we were actually in July in talks with, you know, one of the largest charter companies in Illinois.

They're a top 50 motor coach operator in North America.

So they do a substantial amount of trips per year.

They have pretty high revenue.

And so we were, you know, we had in person meetings and everything.

And we were about to kind of close that deal, but then last minute, you know, they decided that maybe right now it's not the best time to incorporate the software.

So that got a little bit delayed.

So now we are working with a couple other charter companies to onboard them to our software and then hopefully close some of those deals.

But some of those deals do take months on end because some of these sales I'm sure can be long.

Are you, and how are you currently like validating any of that, like any feedback that these operators are sharing with you?

Do you have any changes that you've made to the product because of it?

100%.

So you can only get so far building on your own.

And if you're not using it with the real customers, then there's not going to be much value.

Right.

And so we made it a priority to ship fast and then to use fast as well.

And so we have a feedback loop with the, you know, the first few customers we had implemented with.

Right.

And so when we gave it to the actual back office staff that were using it, you know, in the specific technology, we had added ways for them to add feedback.

We had added like, do you like this?

Do you like that?

What is wrong with this?

As well as we had, you know, continued to meet with them on a pretty strong basis, and in those meetings, they would tell us, you know, what is working, what is not.

We translate that into business use cases.

And then eventually the technical team would execute that on the engineering kind of behalf of things.

Yeah.

I'm curious, do you see a future where you want to expand into different industries?

Like for instance, that.

Utilize quoting.

So maybe even small businesses that are selling cakes or something, Something that requires customization.

Are you hoping to evolve into something like that or do you want to stay in that niche category of transportation and charter systems?

How are you viewing this potential tech you have built into expanding into other industries?

Yeah, that's a great question.

When I had actually presented at 1 million coffee cups, I had people come up to me telling me that this could be a very valid use case for different types of industries.

And so I remember we had looked into event management as well.

And then we actually got one person who messaged me after the presentation and was interested in actually using the software for a completely different use case.

And so to bring on your point, that's actually something that we are doing right now.

And so we are, you know, as you're pursuing some of this transportation work, we're actually testing this out with other industries as well, seeing how it integrates and seeing how it works.

And that being one of the founders from one mc.

And so the way that our software was built and you know, the way that we kind of tell our engineering team to construct the software is built in a scalable way where A, we can pivot to fast and, and B, this can be applicable to any specific workflow.

And so, I mean, the way that we set up our new workflows is we don't, you know, manually build our software anymore.

You can basically upload a PDF, you can talk to our technology, and within minutes you can map out the entire workflow and build it, you know, customized to however you need to be.

Right.

Because each workflow can be different.

For transportation companies, we've basically just taken that same ideology and we basically applied that to other industries such as the one that we're working with.

And it's something that we're actively in the process.

So we definitely want to expand to other industries.

We're right now, you know, because we have a longer, like more of a longer vision and kind of idea for transportation as we want to expand into other workflows.

So we're taking that more seriously currently.

But also since, you know, we don't have confirmed product market fit yet in transportation, we are also pursuing some of these other things and in the future that's probably something we'll want to go into.

Yeah, no, I think it's a great idea and it definitely has potential for breaking through other markets and specifically other sectors, you know, that might be more useful.

I want to pivot into talking about funding for you.

I mean you're obviously still in college, you're still pretty young, you're still building out.

But how are, how are you currently funding moreover, like in this early stage, like do you have any funding or how have you been just building out of your, your dorm room literally?

Yeah.

So the way that this company started was at the dorm room, right?

So we got, you know, me and my friend bought a cloud subscription, built out the MVP and then from there, you know, that's how the company came about.

And so we started, you know, with a simple $20 cloud subscription built out, the initial MVP, ran out of credits, so decided we might need the hundred dollar plan.

And so then officially we got a product, right?

But other than that, we've currently been bootstrapping the company.

And so we've actually received VC interest, we've received large investment offers, seven figure investment offers from people who believe in the vision, who want to invest in us, right.

Even before we, you know, have revenue and things like that, before we even had initial clients, we had actually applied to a bunch of accelerators in February where we had zero idea like anything that we were doing right now.

I mean we had zero traction, we had nothing going for us.

We still place in the top 5%, top 10% of applicants as 18 year old kids with nothing built, nothing sold, nothing created, right.

And so we had received, you know, from multiple accelerators, like Y Combinators, you know, we were top 10% leap year, we were top 10%.

And so we were actually going to apply again, but we decided to wait on that and we're going to apply later.

Which kind of tied back to why we didn't raise funding was One, where college students, right?

We still have the rest of college to finish, we have a college degree to complete.

And then two, when we did the math, it wasn't an amount of money where we needed that millions of dollars to be raised, millions of dollars to be funded, right?

We could start our company from personal funds with a couple hundred dollars to get it up, get it declared as a company and a full corporation.

And basically through the support of accelerator programs such as Iventure, we were able to get a bunch of credits that had helped us to initially start this company.

Right?

And so we used, you know, personal funds.

I mean, if you're looking at how much we put in, we probably put in maybe 500 to $1,000 to get this company up and running.

And that was when we had a full software and an actual client willing to work with us.

The rest of that has just been using credits.

And then to basically optimize our expenses.

I applied to a bunch of programs, I worked with the Iventure leads.

They gave us a bunch of opportunities, a bunch of credits, and from there we cut our expenses to below 200 per month.

And so that's how we're currently funding the company, all coming from a personal aspect.

And after we sign one full time contract that we basically cleared even by miles.

And so it's not that expensive to run this company.

We do anticipate probably ending up having to raise money in the future or some sort if you tend to scale faster than we can, or if we need talent or things of that sort.

But at least for the next couple of months, that's not our main focus.

That makes sense.

And so at this stage, what does growth actually mean for you?

Are you looking more into the operations of using the product or revenue or partnerships, or what is it that is driving you to get to the next stage?

Yeah, so that's a good question.

We, you know, started this company with a completely different division and we went through numerous pivots, right, figuring out what worked, what didn't.

We just kept building, shipping, iterating, and that's how we got to our first couple of implementations with the companies that we are working with right now.

And so there we were able to refine the product, we were able to find a real use case, we were able to test it, we were able to learn that, you know, we should start with quoting instead of the entire operation because integration is a little bit difficult.

People don't trust our software.

We still have to develop partnerships with these companies and trust with these relationships because Ultimately, that's where business is done.

Right.

And so we basically spend a lot of our early months focusing on those specific implementations and waiving all those costs.

Right.

So taking a loss with those customers.

Right.

With the whole idea of one, we want to build trust with these companies because if you look at the way that the transportation charter industry works, it's all warm connections, it's all word of mouth.

So if we build a good product for one company, they'll introduce us to the next or some of their partners or some.

Someone in their affiliate network that may benefit from the software.

And so we decided to take a loss to work with these companies, a couple of companies that we're working with, and then two to really refine the product and figure out what we were doing.

Right.

We were building a lot, but we weren't working actively and running a loop where we were looking at use cases and then translating them into technical needs and then looking at use cases and then figuring out, okay, what is most useful for these companies and then building that for.

We were just kind of building in fluidity.

Right.

And so these companies taught us, like, how to actually build real products for real use cases.

And so now that we've kind of figured that out, it's, you know, mostly revenue.

It's mostly getting more companies like real, you know, paying companies to use our software and our product.

And so in July, when we're actively talking with this pretty large charter company, they're willing to pay us, they're willing to, you know, get, get on a contract and use our software.

And so we have real validation that, that, you know, people are interested in using the product.

It has now been refined to the point where we can talk about real revenue numbers.

And so, you know, to answer your question, growth now specifically, I think, falls under that, that revenue line.

And so that's what we're kind of looking forward.

We've refined the product a lot ever since we started, and so now we want to really get it into people's hands and sell it.

Yeah.

Are you starting with pilots or are you starting or are you going directly to sell with.

With potential new customers?

Yeah.

So a lot of these customers are very hesitant on software.

And so the only way to do that is to create trust.

And so we'll give them like one, you know, a waived free trial or a waived implementation for two or three.

Yeah, that makes sense.

That's smart.

Their back office team, we either can run two different ways that a back office team can use it for incoming requests and, you know, Inside to what they're already running, they can type in, you know, the same specific request that comes through the, you know, traditional static request forms, and they can see what our engine outputs.

And if it's the same as, you know, what they're going to respond, then, you know, we're actively solving a problem that provides value to them.

And so through that, they're able to gain a lot of trust.

And then after they use it in the back office, we do limited face customer usage.

Right.

Yeah, well, it sounds like you're offering some sort of customization for these companies too.

So I think that always translates to like, oh, this is really interesting.

This is something we could use.

And then bam.

Like, bam, you sealed the deal.

Right.

But that sounds promising and hopefully it'll work for you guys and you can continue to build and iterate and secure some of those partnerships for the long run.

I want to transition a little bit into talking about the community that you have been, where you've been building.

So in your case, you've been at the University of Illinois Urbana in Iventure accelerator mentioned how has that experience been influencing your journey as a founder?

The sense of community that you're building through, through school and through other ecosystems.

Yeah.

So I think one of the biggest benefits of building in school is there are other kids that are wanting to, A, build with you and B, wanting to learn about your journey.

Right.

So, like, there's always people that you can talk to that are like, hey, I have this idea, I want to try this out, or, hey, I also have this idea, I want to try this out.

And that keeps you very motivated.

That keeps you in a very high spirit because you know that there are other people around you that are wanting to do the same thing.

Thing.

And the biggest, most beneficial aspect of that is you can take learnings from them and they can take learnings from you.

Right.

So if I were to go tell an incoming freshman who's interested in building, you know, product and transportation, I have a list of already some of the failures, a long list of what I've done wrong, that, hey, don't make this mistake when you're building specific software for a very niche industry, a very software lagging kind of type of industry.

Right.

So definitely the community allows you to do a lot of learning that I don't think you get if you're just sitting by yourself or sitting in a room building the software by yourself.

And then second is taking part in, you know, these startup incubator programs run by the university.

So we had taken part in Iventure accelerator this summer.

And so we moved to Chicago full time for two months.

The program was one month.

So we spent one month building out our program.

But more than that, really connecting with a solid network of people.

Right.

And so before, when we were building in our dorm rooms, we didn't really have many people that we're talking to about this.

We didn't have a lot of connections at that point in the specific industry.

We didn't have a lot of investor connections, mentor connections, things like that.

When we transitioned to this accelerator program, that's where we gained all of our valuable mentors.

That's where we gained all of the alumni founders that came back and gave us advice.

That's where we gained, you know, connections in the transportation industry specifically.

Right.

And so that gave us a lot of a sense of community, like, hey, there are other people in this space who want to help you, who want to help you succeed.

Right.

I mean, ultimately, these programs don't take X, you know, amount of equity in your companies.

They simply give so that they can help and your success is a part of their win.

Right.

And so that, you know, gave us a lot of motivation, they gave us a lot of resources as per credits to run the company and get this company started as per a network.

Right.

So we gained a lot of valuable mentors from this program.

And I explicitly remember, actually in my first week, we're talking to actually an Iventure founder, right, who actually started his company in Iventure the same way that we did two years ago.

And it was the first week of the program, and me and my co founder, we had a product built, but nothing, no clients, nothing.

Right.

And so we were just kind of building this product out.

And he really told us a valuable piece of advice was like, hey, you guys cannot just be building out in the air.

You need to start running a loop of talking to people cold, calling people cold, emailing people, learning about the industry, and then figuring out how does that actually translate into an engineering and executable solution.

Things like that, you don't just get building alone.

And that one particular instance genuinely saved Us months of time.

Otherwise we would have just kept building and building and building.

But getting mentors like that definitely teach you a lot.

And I think they also help you accelerate the process as per, not being in one of these communities are not having the opportunity to take part in an incubator program such as Iventure.

Yeah, for sure.

And I mean, Chicago has a really strong transportation and logistics ecosystem.

So I'm sure that there is a lot more business.

And I mean, I feel like being based in the Midwest is you're already at an advantage for what you're building, you know.

So I'm curious about that transition to Chicago.

When you came from school to Chicago, like, what was that like?

And have you kind of also embedded this, your team or yourself in the community also here in Chicago?

And how are you getting support from your peers around the city to kind of learn more about this product and get you out there?

Yeah, so I think Chicago is single handedly one of the best decisions that we made to grow this company.

I think in terms of support, right back to 1mc, after we had the opportunity to present at 1mc, we had, I had probably 15 people message me on LinkedIn, all willing to just help.

Right.

They wanted to be a part of what we were doing.

They wanted to help in any way they could have.

Right.

And so we got a lot of mentorship opportunities and basically everything that was on our ask slide was fulfilled within that specific day.

Right.

So that's the type of stuff that you don't see building in a college dorm room.

That's the type of stuff you don't get if you don't have a committee like that in Chicago.

Right.

And so that is definitely one of the best aspects is you get a lot of people that are willing to help you, especially as a student.

Right.

They want to see students succeed, they want to help students because they've also been in that position.

They understand how it is.

Right.

And then, you know, two, in terms of our team, so our me and my co founder, we were in Chicago, but a lot of our team worked remotely in building.

So a lot of engineering team worked remotely as well as our implementation engineers also worked remotely.

But when we had to implement with clients, they would come in person and actually make sure everything was, you know, working well and things like that.

But definitely like the support, we decided to, you know, meet a lot of people.

So, you know, we wanted to network with people, we wanted to meet people because Chicago, you know, like you said, is a very supportive kind of community.

There's a lot of investors, there's a lot of founders.

You know, there's a lot of mentors, leaders, people in, you know, top companies that are willing to help you grow your company, give you advice, whatever it may be.

So that became a big priority for us as well as.

Like you mentioned, Chicago is a very large transportation hub.

Right.

Actually, one of the largest in the country.

Right.

And so there we were able to talk to people more in person.

Actually, that was one of the biggest reasons we wanted to go to Chicago was, you know, in person, led conversations.

In person, led sales.

Because in an industry where you cannot sell technology in the first place, and trying to sell technology over the phone is what we're trying to do, it's very difficult to actually convince them to use it, let alone actually buy it.

Right.

And so in person was one of the ways that we were able to break down those barriers and allow them to see the software, see the capabilities.

And then it also showed us a different type of companies that we could sell to in the Midwest.

We had a specific company we were working with and started off with, which was a company that I had interned at in Chicago.

We had a completely different relic company, companies.

Right.

And we had learned about how all these companies specifically work that I think gave us a lot of insight into helping us pivot a lot over the summer, eventually figure out our specific niche and our specific market that landed us in the charter industry.

Yeah, no, that's great.

It was definitely great to have you guys or you present and hear about the company and what you're building and how we can support.

So we'll definitely continue to keep an eye on what you guys are doing and how you're advancing dancing.

So what's next for you over the next 12 to a year, months?

What are you hoping to accomplish?

Yeah, obviously, 10 days from now, I'll be back in school, so I'll be a college student studying.

But outside of that, building the company, I think what really is a main priority for us now is we envision being a layer for transportation.

I mean, eventually you want to get into the entire workflow, and that's our vision to.

To create intelligence at every mile and then also, like, eliminate that busy work to allow these companies to run more efficiently.

Right.

But, you know, within the next year, it's kind of two things that we're really focusing on and have our company kind of align on these specific goals, and our team is working on these specific things.

Right.

The first definitely comes down to retention.

Right.

We're Building an operational software.

So it's very hard to break in.

But when you can break in and get companies to use it and get companies to pay for it, and there's no going back, that we know we have achieved product market fit.

We know we have created something in the industry that people are willing to use and is a viable product for this specific type of market.

And so that is definitely the first thing in the next year that we want to, you know, achieve.

And then the second thing is, you know, validating this by having real, you know, revenue by having real customers paying for this product.

I think those are the two biggest priorities.

And, and that's kind of what the next year looks like for us.

And that's our main focus the next couple of months.

We want to.

So, like, we're kind of actively talking to more charter companies, so we want to focus on closing those companies and then earning the right to expand into other industries.

Right.

So trust is a very important factor we've learned in our conversations with all sorts of transportation companies.

Right.

And so we want to build that trust with our quoting layer.

Right.

And then eventually expand into other workflows.

And so within the next couple of months, if we can get a solid set of charter companies, is using our coding layer, you know, all of the omnichannels and stuff like that, build trust and then from there figure out how we can expand and deploy our software on top of what they already have to help with the dispatch, to help with the booking, the billing and things like that.

And if we could kind of do that within the year basis, then I think that's a successful year for our company.

Looking ahead.

Yeah.

Well, best of luck to you.

I hope that you're able to accomplish all of that and more.

Right.

Well, if anyone listening to, to right now, like wants to learn more about Mobora or connect with you, where can they find you?

Yeah, so they can always message me on LinkedIn.

So my LinkedIn is Akhil Kumar.

So always looking to meet founders, people, ventures, you know, anyone interested in this space, as well as people who want to maybe use the software.

In any particular use case, you can message me on LinkedIn.

You can also check out our website at Mavora AI, where we've kind of highlighted what we've built and what we provide to some of these companies.

And then also you can, you know, reach me on email, Akhilavora AI, and I'll send you a personalized response in a pretty quick manner.

Awesome.

And I will put all of that also in the show notes so that people can easily access it if they're listening too.

But.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chatting with me today.

I feel like I've learned so much about the quoting industry now and best of luck with the build, with the grow, with the scaling.

I think you're definitely one of those young founders to watch.

Definitely.

Keep in touch.

So keep in touch.

Let me know if you need anything and we'll be in touch.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for the supportive 1 MC committee to the supportive group.

You know, thank you for everything you guys have done.

I think it's made a big difference on what we're working on.

So of course, I'm glad to hear that.

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