Why we're building VMS: a business transport marketplace

We're building VMS because business transport in Bangladesh still runs on phone calls, paper log books and trust that breaks at 6 am. A business transport marketplace fixes that from both sides. Companies post what they need. Vetted fleets bid. The company picks the winner, and the trips, tracking and billing run in one place. This post explains why.

What does a bad transport morning look like?

It starts with a phone call. The admin officer at a Tejgaon office is still at home. It's 5:55. The driver for the factory QA team says the vehicle has a flat tyre. The team was meant to leave for Gazipur at 6:15.

The officer calls the rent-a-car owner. No answer. She calls a second number she keeps for emergencies. That fleet has a vehicle, but in Mohammadpur. It will take 40 minutes. The QA visit is now late, and the buyer's representative is already on the road.

Nobody in this story is a villain. The driver called. The owner was asleep after a late airport run. The officer did her best with a phone and two numbers. The system failed, because there wasn't one.

This scene is a composite. We've heard versions of it from admin teams, HR managers and fleet owners across Dhaka.

Now multiply it. One study gives a sense of scale. A 2017 World Bank analysis found that congestion in Dhaka eats up 3.2 million working hours a day. Traffic is not something any one company can fix. But the hours lost to a vehicle that never came are fixable.

Why is business transport still offline?

Talk to ten rent-a-car owners in Mirpur or Uttara and you hear the same story. The business grew from one vehicle. Then two. Then a cousin's microbus joined. Clients came through friends, and stayed because the owner answered the phone.

That model works until it doesn't. Here is where it strains:

• Papers live in a drawer. Fitness, tax token and insurance dates sit on paper. Someone notices the expiry when a sergeant stops the vehicle.

• Trip logs live in a notebook. The driver writes km in a log book, or doesn't. The bill at month end is a reconstruction.

• Bills start arguments. The company's admin counts days one way. The fleet counts them another. Both are partly right.

• Drivers are paid from memory. Overtime and meal claims are settled in cash, from whatever the driver remembers.

• Good fleets are invisible. A careful owner with five clean vehicles in Savar has no way to show a Gulshan company what he offers.

The companies buying transport have their own version. They post nowhere, because there is nowhere to post. They ask around. They take three quotes on WhatsApp in three formats and compare them by feel. Then they live with that fleet for a year, because switching feels harder than suffering.

What is a business transport marketplace?

A business transport marketplace is a place where companies post their vehicle needs and transport suppliers compete to fill them, with the work then run and billed in the same system. It is not a ride app. Nobody taps for a ride in 30 seconds. It is closer to procurement, but procurement that keeps running after the contract is signed.

VMS, a business transport marketplace in Bangladesh, works on that idea. We kept the services to two, because two is what companies actually buy:

One-off trips, such as an airport transfer for a visiting buyer, sit inside the company's account as Scheduled Rides. They go through the company's own sign-off.

Why does the company pick the winner, not us?

This was the first big design decision. Many platforms match supply to demand automatically. The platform decides who gets the job. That works for a taxi ride. It fails for a monthly contract.

A company choosing a fleet weighs things we can't score for them:

• Does this fleet already know our Ashulia gate and our security rules?

• Will the owner pick up the phone at 11 pm?

• Do we trust a bigger fleet more, or a smaller one that will treat us as its main client?

• Is a lower price worth a vehicle two years older?

So on VMS, fleets bid and the company picks. A bid card shows the fleet's size, the monthly cost, the vehicle proposed and a short pitch. Rental offers can sit next to each other on one screen, and each line is awarded on its own. One fleet might win the two sedans, another the microbus.

We do add one signal the company can't easily get elsewhere. A fleet that often swaps vehicles after winning carries a visible flag. That's not a rating. It's a fact about behaviour, and the company decides what it means.

The job of a marketplace is to make good choices easy, not to make them for you.

That idea shapes most of what we build.

What happens after the contract is signed?

This is where most procurement tools stop, and where most transport trouble starts. We designed VMS to keep going.

Both sides then sign in VMS, each typing their name in turn. The contract goes live with the final name. Then the daily work begins, and four things matter.

Papers are checked before trips start

Before day one, the buyer can open the papers of the exact vehicle and driver it was given. VMS checks those papers first; no live trip runs on an unchecked set. If a fitness or licence date lapses later, the company hears about it.

Trips are tracked while they're live

A company can watch a vehicle only during a trip it is paying for. A rider sees the vehicle coming for her half an hour ahead of her pickup. Nobody gets a permanent view of a fleet's vehicles. That's deliberate. A fleet owner should not have to give a client a window into his whole business.

Bills come from real trips

Invoices are built on the 1st from what actually ran. A Pick & Drop bill counts legs; if the fleet called a leg off, that leg costs nothing. A Rental bill starts from the agreed monthly figure, then adds km, overtime and meal charges. Each bill has a map for every leg. From that bill, the buyer can sign it off, park it, challenge it, or log what was paid and the TDS kept back.

Problems have a place to go

A complaint can start on either side, and it closes when the other side settles it. In an emergency, one SOS press dials 999 and warns all three parties at once: buyer, fleet and VMS.

None of this is glamorous. It is the plumbing that stops the month-end argument from happening at all.

Who is the supply backbone?

A marketplace is only as good as what's on the other side. In Bangladesh, the supply side is thousands of small operators. Some run fifty vehicles. Many run three. Plenty are a single owner-driver with one well-kept Noah.

We built for all of them. A fleet can sign up as a "Rent-a-car company" or as a "Driver with your own vehicle". VMS approves each account. Then the fleet bids on company requests in its own name.

Three choices shape the supply side.

Papers shouldn't block a good fleet

Some companies require a trade licence, a BIN and a TIN. A small, careful fleet may not have all three yet. On VMS, that fleet can still bid through a partner company. The company still gets a supplier with the papers it asked for. The fleet still gets the work.

Fleets can borrow from each other

Partner fleets let one VMS fleet hire a vehicle-and-driver pair from another for one monthly amount. A fleet can also post an anonymous "fleet need" asking others for a vehicle or a driver. This is how a Narayanganj owner with four vehicles can take a contract for six.

Pricing for fleets

Pricing for fleets comes from our team. We'd rather fleets come for the work and stay for the tools.

The tools are real. Papers go on each vehicle's and driver's profile, with email reminders before they expire. Drivers get a simple Bangla-first app with trip mode and an earnings ledger. A fleet already using a common GPS tracker can link that account. Bills, trip sheets, expenses, driver pay and TDS records sit in one place.

What problems map to what we built?

If you skimmed to here, this table is the short version.

What are we deliberately not doing?

Saying no is part of the design. A few things you won't find on VMS today:

1. We don't pick the fleet. The company does.

2. We don't publish ratings of fleets. One bad morning shouldn't define a five-year business.

3. We don't take payments online. Bills are approved in VMS and paid the way companies already pay.

4. We don't run outside Bangladesh. The papers, the roads and the holidays are all local.

5. We don't publish platform numbers yet. When we do, they'll be dated and real.

Some of this will change. Vehicle–driver matching beyond partner fleets is something we're building. We'll write about it when it's live.

How will we know it's working?

We'll judge VMS by the measures our users already use. For a company, that means on-time arrival, complaints per month and cost per head. For a fleet owner, it means idle days, bills paid without dispute, and drivers paid correctly.

Here's a worked check any HR team can run, with or without us. It's an example, not data.

Example figures for a 22-day month with 20 Pick legs a day. Use your own.

If those numbers don't move, the tool isn't doing its job. That goes for VMS too.

Who are we writing this blog for?

For the admin officer with two emergency numbers. For the HR manager whose BPO agents log in late because the vehicle came late. For the rent-a-car owner in Mirpur doing month-end bills at midnight. And for the owner-driver in Chattogram wondering whether his vehicle could earn more.

Every post will try to be useful on its own. Some will explain how VMS works. Most won't mention us much at all. Yesterday's post, on re-timing BPO pickups after the US clock change, is the kind of thing we mean: a problem, a table and a message you can send tonight.