ON THE QUAYSIDE

With Neeral Chudasama

It’s not unusual to find solutions being provided to the maritime industry by companies and individuals who are first fascinated by a peripheral experience that exposes them to how the industry operates. Provided with a glimpse of how things have always been done, these “outsiders” are uniquely positioned to offer insights on how things could be done. Today’s guest On the Quayside is exactly one of these outsiders that is seeking to offer a digital service to help streamline the cumbersome process associated with port calls. Neeral Chudasama may have a background in marketing and design – but he is now designing a new port management tool, Quayline, that he hopes will help the market.

▶︎  Your background is in marketing and design. Walk us through how you ended up identifying this gap and why you decided to pursue developing Quayline.

I studied Professional Design and Advertising, Bachelor's with Honours. Shipping wasn't on my radar at all growing up. After school I worked in hospitality for a bit, then moved into freelance design. At some point I took a three-month internship at a shipping agency in Mombasa, and that agency ended up becoming one of my long-term branding clients. Over the years they referred me to other ship agents around Africa, so I kept ending up inside their operations, project after project, watching how things actually got done.

I've also got friends in the industry, and we talk about it fairly often.

But honestly, the thing that pushed me to build Quayline was smaller than all of that. I kept waiting on feedback from clients for design work, and every time it was the same line: "we're swamped." Hearing that enough times got me thinking about why an industry this important still runs on so much manual back and forth. Quayline came out of that, really.

▶︎  Briefly explain the concept and premise – and how it meets the gap you feel exists in the market.

Quayline is a port call management platform for ship agencies operating along the African coast. It takes what currently happens over email threads, WhatsApp groups, and scattered spreadsheets, and puts it in one place, from the moment a vessel is nominated through to settlement.

This is basically what I saw sitting with that first agency in Mombasa, and later with others. A vessel gets nominated, and suddenly there's a flurry of emails to port authorities, agents, and principals, WhatsApp messages chasing updates, and a spreadsheet somewhere trying to track disbursement accounts, costs, and approvals. None of it is connected. Information lives in five different places, and if one person is out sick or a message gets buried, everything slows down.

It's not that the agents aren't working hard. It’s just that everyone I've dealt with is stretched thin already. The tools just weren't built for this kind of coordination. Quayline puts the whole port call in one system, so nothing gets lost between an email, a WhatsApp message, and someone's memory.

▶︎  So, who are you specifically aiming this at?

It's aimed at ship agencies operating in African ports, the ones acting as the local representative for a vessel's owner or charterer during a port call. That's the core user; the people I've actually sat with and watch the work.

Their principals matter too. The shipowners, charterers, and operators need to know what is happening with their vessel without chasing the agent for it every few hours. The agency logs in and runs the operation day-to-day, but the update reaches the principal without anyone having to write another email.

▶︎  Quayline currently only seems to include a handful of ports. What is the process for expanding this, or can any new port be added by a client?

Right now, there are ten port pages live. I started with some of the biggest and busiest ports across Africa on purpose. These are ports with real volume and complexity, ensuring that the platform gets tested against the hardest cases first.

Quayline isn't limited to those ten though. It is built to handle any coastal port country on the continent. Adding a new one isn't really a technical job at this point, it's mostly about how we structure the rollout and pricing for that agency. So, if a client operates somewhere that isn't listed yet, we can bring it on, that's just a pricing and onboarding conversation.

▶︎  With this in mind, what can a new user expect when they sign up and log in? How user friendly is it and what will they be able to do through the platform?

When an agency signs up, they log in and see their vessels, port calls, and disbursement accounts, all in one view. This eliminates the need to dig through inboxes to see where something stands. It's cloud-based, so there's no software licence to buy, no server to maintain, no IT setup needed. An agent just needs to open a browser on any device and they are in.

From there, they can handle the whole port call in one place by logging a vessel nomination; tracking each stage as it moves through the port; building rate cards, and managing the PDA right through to final settlement. Everything gets recorded as it happens so instead of a paper trail spread across emails and spreadsheets, they will have one clean history to pull up whenever they need it.

I spent a fair bit of time on the small stuff too. There's dark and light mode, agents are often working odd hours tracking a vessel, so dark mode helps at 2am when your eyes are tired. File uploads keep documents with the port call instead of buried in an inbox, there's notifications so nothing slips through, and export options so agents can pull their data out for a report or a principal.

And none of it needs any major training. Anyone who knows how a port call works will know how to use Quayline in just a few minutes.

▶︎  As already noted, your background is in design – how are you managing the technological aspects of the platform and protecting data and user security? Do you have technology partners in this venture?

I don't have a technology partner at the moment. I've built and managed this myself. People hear “design background” and assume the technical side is where I needed help, but I made a point of learning it properly rather than outsourcing it.

Understanding that agencies work with sensitive client information, I knew I had to take security seriously from the start.  Different people on the team only see what they need to see and the data's encrypted, In addition, you get logged out automatically if you step away and there's a record of who did what and when.

I'm not against bringing in a technology partner eventually, especially as this grows into new markets. But I wanted to understand every part of what I was building first, rather than hand pieces of it off before I really knew what I was handing off.

It keeps me accountable for the entire system, not just the parts I'm comfortable with.

▶︎  Do you feel the market is sceptical about using tech solutions from Africa and, if so, how do you intend to address these concerns?

Yes, I've heard it more than once. “This is an old school industry” comes up a lot; like a warning that trying to change it is a waste of time. There's also a quieter version of that scepticism aimed at me specifically as a design guy who wasn't from shipping, building something for shipping. I got some of that early on too.

I don't think you argue people out of it. The industry runs on time and clear communication. A vessel doesn't wait for a slow email reply and a missed message can cost real money in delays and penalties. So, the way I've dealt with it is just by making Quayline work well and letting agencies see that for themselves.

Once someone sees how much faster their own communication gets, the scepticism usually drops pretty fast.

▶︎  Do you have plans to add new features in the future and, if so, what would they be and over what sort of timeline?

Yes, the current version is deliberately lean. I wanted to get the core port call workflow right before adding anything else, but there is more coming.

A dedicated mobile app is next. Being able to log in and manage a port call from your phone just as easily as from a desktop is important and I am working on making that easier via a tablet or phone. After that, I want to give principals their own portal so they can see live status without emailing the agent, and better reporting will be built in over time as agencies build up more data in the system.

On invoicing, we're making it easier to pull clean records tied to each disbursement account, but Quayline stays out of handling or moving client money, that's a line I won't cross.

I'd rather get this right than get it out fast. The plan is to get the first agencies running on what exists now, see how they actually use it and let that tell me what to build next.

▶︎  What does success look like for you and Quayline?

Success for me is fairly simple. Remember that “we're swamped” line I mentioned earlier, that's basically what started all this. So, success looks like an agent opening Quayline in the morning and not having to dig through five WhatsApp groups and an overflowing inbox to figure out where a vessel stands.  It also means seeing a principal getting a clear picture of their port call without chasing anyone for it. If an agency can't imagine going back to spreadsheets and email chains, that's success.

Longer term, I'd like Quayline to be the platform ship agencies across Africa reach for, not because it's the only option, but because it actually understands how this industry works day to day. And doing that as something built, owned, and run from Africa matters to me too.

▶︎  What message would you like to send to people reading this?

Just this. If you're an agency reading this and thinking about giving Quayline a look, the first five who reach out to me because of this article get fast-tracked. No waiting in a queue behind everyone else, I'll personally make sure you're set up and running quickly.

And to any agency reading this and thinking “we're too busy to even look at something new,” that's exactly the reason to look. The whole point of Quayline is to give you back the time that's currently going into chasing updates and untangling communication. It's worth ten minutes to see what that looks like.

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