We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tom Vazhekatt. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tom below.

Tom, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I started my company, Routora, in my dorm at UT Dallas. I was inspired by a project where I worked closely with a small business in the delivery space. That experience revealed a massive gap in the market—while large corporations had access to sophisticated route-planning solutions, small businesses, and gig drivers were left with nothing. Seeing how much time and money could be saved with better routing, I decided to build Routora to address these inefficiencies and help underserved segments optimize their routes more effectively.

Our mission at Routora is to save time, reduce costs, and help people make their day-to-day lives more efficient. But, beyond just improving route planning, we’re really focused on creating a more sustainable future. One of the biggest reasons why this mission resonates with me personally is because I’ve always been drawn to using technology to solve real-world problems. There’s something incredibly rewarding about building a product that people actually use to make their lives easier, and in this case, also make a positive environmental impact.

I’ve seen firsthand how much inefficiency exists in everyday things like delivery routes or running errands, and it’s staggering when you realize how much time, fuel, and energy gets wasted. When we’re talking about delivery drivers, small business owners, or even just the average person trying to map out their day, every mile saved can really add up—not just in terms of time and money but also in reducing carbon emissions.

The mission is meaningful to me because it feels like we’re tackling a problem that not only makes life easier for people but also helps in this bigger fight for sustainability. I’ve always believed that businesses should aim to create value beyond just profit, and with Routora, we’re doing that by helping people live more efficiently while contributing to something as important as environmental conservation. It’s not just about route optimization—it’s about creating a future where efficiency and sustainability can go hand in hand. That’s what really drives me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Absolutely, so I am a 22-year-old startup founder who enjoys building! It doesn’t matter what I’m building but the creative process just drives me. It’s most rewarding when other people can use and benefit from something I’ve created which is why the whole entrepreneurship scene is so rewarding to me.

After working with a small business in the delivery space, this opportunity opened my eyes to the logistics world– particularly for underserved markets. I used my technical background as a computer science major and my passion for environmental sustainability to build a solution to a massive problem: route planning.

Routora is an AI-powered route optimization platform designed to make route planning faster and more efficient, especially for gig drivers and small businesses. Our platform creates the most efficient sequence of stops, helping users save time, reduce fuel costs, and minimize their environmental impact. What sets us apart is that we focus on the smaller operations that often get overlooked by other solutions, which tend to be geared toward large enterprises. We’ve built an easy-to-use product that’s accessible to everyone, even if they don’t have the resources of a big company.

One of the things I’m most proud of is the impact we’ve already made. Routora has helped over 50,000 drivers in 90+ countries save more than 2.5 million miles on the road, which not only saves money and time but also reduces CO2 emissions significantly. We have three products including a Chrome extension, a mobile app, and a web app. We also plan on launching Routora for teams in the coming weeks so be on the lookout!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Social media.

Our growth to date has been entirely organic with almost no money spent on marketing. Social media is awesome and it’s the best way to grow your user base for essentially no cost. As a college student with no funding initially, I grew to my first few thousand users just by reaching out to groups on Reddit. I found that if I was really providing value people would resonate with it and share it with others.

Consistently posting on Reddit, I accumulated millions of impressions which drove our initial growth. These impressions also resulted in organic content being written about us online. We started seeing a new article or blog written about us every week talking about how much time and money we were saving users.

We then replicated this across other platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels where we accumulated many more millions of views. Getting the users is one thing, but retaining them and listening to their feedback is another. This is a common issue I see among founders, as many of them do not actively look for feedback. Those that do often do not make adjustments based on the feedback. I think what really helped us was doing just that.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I went from being a college student with a side project to becoming a full-time founder, and honestly, it’s still a little surreal. I wasn’t thinking about turning it into a full-time job back then, I just wanted to create something cool that could make a difference.

It’s fulfilling to know that Routora is actually helping people save time, and money, and even reduce their environmental footprint—real impact that goes beyond just a cool idea.

Scaling it up from a side project to a full-time business wasn’t easy, though. One of the key milestones along the way were winning the UTD Big Idea Competition, which really validated that we were onto something. From there, we expanded the team and launched both our mobile and web platforms. On launch, our mobile app was featured in the App Store’s top charts for navigation. This launch also got us highlighted by major publications like Business Insider, Yahoo Finance, and Bloomberg– alongside TV interviews with CBS and ABC News affiliates in Dallas.

Seeing our growth has been amazing, but none of it would have been possible without the incredible team I have around me. I think at this point there’s probably been at least 20 people who have directly worked on or helped with a project for Routora. Their dedication and belief in Routora is what’s really driven us forward.

It’s been a journey full of long nights, countless problem-solving sessions, and, of course, plenty of learning moments. But the fact that I get to wake up every day and work on something I built from scratch—something that genuinely makes a difference—is what keeps me going.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.routora.com/