Streamlining Manual Logistics Workflows with Pallet

Sushanth Raman's story is like no other.

How many people can say they sent themselves to a military boarding school in India as a sixth grader? That’s exactly what he did. It was there, he says, that he built the grit and determination that brought him to where he is today.

After earning his Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Columbia University, Sushanth began working at Retool, a company helping businesses automate their workflows. His experience there — along with watching his grandparents run their food distribution business — eventually inspired him to start something of his own.

At Retool, Sushanth realized that even the most advanced companies were slowed down by outdated processes.

It was during a Sunday visit to a customer that Sushanth’s vision clicked into place. The owner, buried under a hundred sheets of paper and manually entering data, couldn’t even take a break to watch the game.

In 2022, he officially came up with the idea for Pallet, an AI-driven logistics management system.

“The vision is that Pallet will take the logistics off your plate so you can focus on what’s most important to you. We’ll take the routine work off your plate so that you can focus on what differentiates your service.”

Sushanth’s goal was to create a bridge between the rapidly evolving world of AI and taking the best of Silicon Valley and injecting it into your business so that all you have to do is sit back and run it. He described Pallet’s custom AI agent, which features modular action and reasoning nodes that users can build upon.

“Underneath the hood, the agent reruns the workflow ten to a hundred times, and it checks the validation rules. If it doesn’t pass these conditions, I don’t think it should be entered into the system. So, even if it hallucinates one time, because we rerun it so many times, it’ll get it right eventually.”

In a world where speed and hustle dominate, Sushanth stands out — not only for his unconventional mindset but also for his unconventional approach to running a company.

He and his team hire people not from Silicon Valley, but from the logistics sector itself. As Sushanth sees it, only hiring people from Silicon Valley means losing the most crucial ingredient: customer empathy.

Along with his distinctive hiring methods, Sushanth has a unique perspective on what he calls ‘‘winning the game’.

He believes that if you truly want to win, you need to set a high bar, understand your customers, and ship high-quality products. And there’s only one question to ask yourself:

“Do you want to build a hundred billion dollar company that is going to really define this industry, or do you want to get the silver medal?”

To do that, he says, the best businesses shouldn’t obsess over their competition.

“In startups, you have to be an outlier, and the only way to do that is to have differentiated insights, and the way to do that is to not play the game like everyone else.”

As for his outlook on the future of the industry, Sushanth predicts that only a few major players will remain.

“To really do this well, you have to be prepared to build a business with a lot of hard work and toil for a decade. No matter what business this is, it filters a lot of people. There are lots of quick AI tourists that want to get up to date on freight quickly. They’re not really interested in solving this problem.”

Sushanth and his team, however, clearly are. Pallet recently raised $27 million for in Series B funding, furthering its mission to make technology accessible for everyone and increase the productivity of the global supply chain.

What is next for Pallet?

“Ultimately, what we’re going to do is- you’re not even going to need us to set up these future AI workers. What we want to do is build something self-servable where you can just come, go to Pallet.com, put in some SOP, feed some instructions, and make your own AI worker directly.”

Sushanth’s story is a true testament to the power of hard work, determination, and going against the grain.