TMS Deck: Mapping a Market Nobody Explained Well
Built a sell-side deck for a US transportation management software company by mapping the structural economics of the market
Rohit Kakkar
Senior Associate - Investment Banking at TresVista
From their time as
Associate - Investment Banking and Private Equity
TresVista • 2022 - 2024
Overview
Rohit was briefed to help a client sell a transportation management software company in the US. He came in with no prior knowledge of the TMS market and initially doubted whether the problem the software solved was real or large enough to matter.
The Story
Rohit was briefed to help a client sell a transportation management software company in the US. He came in with no prior knowledge of the TMS market and initially doubted whether the problem the software solved was real or large enough to matter.
He started by mapping the market from first principles. The US is a large, geographically distributed economy: not every city is self-sufficient, and goods move constantly across state lines and into Canada and Mexico. Shippers, brokers, and carriers each needed visibility into where freight was moving, and none of them had a clean way to get it without software.
He researched how labor laws and logistics regulations shaped the US trucking industry, and why the complexity of cross-border and interstate freight created a structural need for TMS platforms. The market was large not because of any single player, but because the underlying logistics problem was endemic to the US economy.
With that understanding, Rohit built a thirty-page deck that framed the market opportunity, the buyer landscape, and the company's positioning. The client's MD reviewed the deck, made targeted edits, and sent it forward. The engagement moved to the next stage.