Kumavat included on Inc.’s prestigious list for her technical leadership in the development and deployment of the first fully driverless commercial operations worldwide

Gatik, the market leader in autonomous middle mile logistics is proud to announce that the company’s Co-founder and Chief Engineer, Apeksha Kumavat has made Inc.’s 2022 Female Founders 100 List. This accomplishment comes hot on the heels of Kumavat being named to the 2022 Automotive News Rising Stars list and being named one of Silicon Valley Business Journal's 40 under 40.

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Gatik's Co-founder and Chief Engineer, Apeksha Kumavat, Recognized on the Inc. 2022 Female Founders 100 List. (Photo: Business Wire)

Inc.’s fifth annual Female Founders 100 list honors a bold group of 100 women whose innovations and expertise are shaping the world into a better place. Collectively, the 2022 honorees’ companies are estimated to be worth more than $22 billion. The exclusive list recognizes founders across all industries who bring with them unique stories of success from each stage of the entrepreneurial journey. These women are leading innovative companies in a vast range of global industries, including tech, retail, finance, fitness, health care, consumer products and more.

“Leading the engineering team at Gatik is a huge privilege and I’m incredibly proud of our technical accomplishments since the founding of the company in 2017,” said Apeksha Kumavat, Co-founder and Chief Engineer, Gatik. “Being included on Inc.’s Female Founders 100 list is not only an incredible honor, but serves as validation for the critical work we’re undertaking at Gatik to establish a more efficient, more productive and more sustainable supply chain for our customers.”

Kumavat’s inclusion on this prestigious list is due to her pioneering work at the helm of Gatik’s engineering team. Under her technical leadership, Gatik became the first and only autonomous trucking company worldwide to operate fully driverless, middle mile commercial deliveries in 2021, doing so with Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company operates daily deliveries without a safety driver on board, enabling an efficient, safe and sustainable solution for transporting goods on repeatable routes between Walmart’s stores. The removal of the safety driver represents a historic milestone in commercializing autonomous delivery safely and at scale.

As Co-founder and Chief Engineer, Apeksha is responsible for the development of Gatik’s autonomous technology and the safe deployment of Gatik’s fully driverless trucks with Fortune 500 customers including Walmart, Pitney Bowes, Georgia-Pacific, KBX and Loblaw. The company now has one of the largest commercially deployed autonomous fleets in North America, with over 30 trucks operating today across Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Ontario.

“These 100 female founders have identified solutions to difficult problems and created valuable, industry-changing companies out of them. We congratulate this year’s list on their achievements and look forward to their continued success,” says Inc. editor-in-chief Scott Omelianuk.

Each year, Inc. editors review thousands of applications highlighting female founders who are challenging the status quo and tackling some of the world’s biggest problems. The list features women who have overcome challenges and lifted those around them, while leading impactful organizations across the country. They join the ranks of previous honorees including Jessica Alba, Tracee Ellis Ross, Rihanna, and Shonda Rhimes.

About Gatik

Gatik, the leader in autonomous middle mile logistics, delivers goods safely and efficiently using its fleet of light and medium duty trucks. The company focuses on short-haul, B2B logistics for Fortune 500 retailers and in 2021 became the first company worldwide to operate fully driverless commercial deliveries on the middle mile. Gatik’s Class 3-6 autonomous box trucks are commercially deployed in multiple markets including Ontario, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. Founded in 2017 by veterans of the autonomous technology industry, the company partners with industry leaders including Ryder, Goodyear, Isuzu and Cummins and has offices in Toronto, Ontario and Mountain View, California. In 2022, Gatik was named to Forbes’ list of America’s Best Startup Employers and by Fast Company as a World Changing Idea. In 2021, Gatik was recognized on the Forbes AI 50 list and as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer.

About Inc.

The world’s most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning, multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels, including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion among the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

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