Blue Dart, has launched its ‘Diwali Express’ offer to uphold the joy of the festive season. The offer will be valid from October 11th 2021 to November 06th 2021. A discounted rate of 40% can be availed on all Diwali Gift shipments, both domestic and international; providing customers with a one-stop solution for all their logistics needs. While the Domestic Offer will be applicable on Domestic DP shipments weighing between 2kgs to 10kgs, the International Offer will apply on International Non Doc and TDI 12 Non Doc shipments weighing between 2kgs to 10kgs, 15kgs & 20kgs. Blue Dart consistently upgrades its products and services to ensure that customers receive nothing but the best. With this offer, customers can avail this service at a discounted rate and send gift hampers, sweets, apparel and much more to their near and dear ones at over 35,000 locations within India and 220 countries across the world. Ketan Kulkarni, Chief Commercial Officer, Blue Dart, says, “Blue Dart has always kept the customer at the centre of our business, and we continue to go the extra mile to bring our customers and their loved ones closer together, even if they are miles apart. The Diwali Express offer is launched, keeping this in mind. We want our customers to feel the happiness of the festive season and share this with their loved ones. We are keen to continue providing our customers with an incomparable value proposition, ensuring that our customers’ shipments reach their loved ones in perfect condition, well within time.”

Express distribution leader Gati has ramped up its network capacity by 25% by adding 100 line haul trucks to its innovative flexi network to connect the demand locations. Thus, Gati aims to cut down the dwell time further in view of the huge spike in demand during the festival season, billed as the stress-test time for supply chain players. The additional trucks in the special flexible network based on the market and route dynamics, will connect the key locations to ease the pressure of servicing the demands. The network will reduce dwell time from existing 9% to 5%. As many as 19 such grid locations including Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Indore and Kolkata have been identified for the purpose. “We are ready for the festival ride and meet the increased demand during the upcoming season. The network capacity will be enhanced by 20-25% while the workforce will be strengthened by at least15%. We are planning to leverage at least 20% of existing facilities further to manage the peak season load. Overall, we expect a 15% increase in productivity per person. We are tech enabled, especially in the area of artificial intelligence, to meet the purpose. We have set up a monitoring system already in place to ensure a better transit time for the customers. Our aim is to ensure a delivery efficiency of 95%+,” said Charles Devlin D’Costa, Chief of Supply Chain Operations, Gati KWE

DP World, a leading global provider of end-to-end logistics solutions, plans to develop logistics infrastructure in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. An MoU was signed between the Government of Dubai and the State Government of Jammu & Kashmir in the presence of Piyush Goyal, Honourable Minister of Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs & Food & Public Distribution and Textiles, Government of India, Manoj Sinha Honourable Lieutenant Governor, Jammu & Kashmir, and Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and CEO, DP World. Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and CEO, DP World, said: “DP World is committed to invest in the logistics infrastructure and facilities to connect Jammu & Kashmir with other domestic markets in India and India with the rest of the world. We are in the process of identifying logistics opportunities in the state with the aim to connect local traders with new markets in India as well as globally. We want to support Indian MSMEs and help them realise better margins with an efficient supply chain that reduces their cost of Logistics.”

Reliable Robotics announced a $100 million Series C funding round led by Coatue Management to support its first aircraft certification program and expedite the launch of commercial cargo operations. Coatue joins past investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Eclipse Ventures, Teamworthy Ventures and Pathbreaker Ventures to bring total fundraising over $133 million. With its airframe independent technology, Reliable’s remotely operated aircraft system is designed to expand safe, flexible and efficient air transportation service to more locations. Reliable Robotics is positioned to unlock access to thousands of underutilized regional and municipal airports in all corners of the country, greatly expanding air transportation options for cargo and eventually passengers. The company’s technology handles all phases of flight including taxi, takeoff, landing and parking, while licensed pilots remotely supervise each flight from a control center. The system has the capability to autoland on smaller airstrips in rural or remote areas without requiring expensive infrastructure to be installed and maintained.

With the ongoing festive season, the new-age logistics companies expect multi-fold growth in shipments and are fully geared to meet the challenge with measures such as capacity expansion and additional hiring. With aggressive demands during festive seasons over the last few years, COVID-19 has further accelerated e-commerce adoption in all segments, be it business-to-consumer (B2C), direct-to-consumer (D2C) or business-to-business (B2B). Xpressbees Chief Business Officer for B2C, Harsha Bhoi, said, “the overall volume in the festive season goes to two-three times for the overall e-commerce markets”. “This year, we are expecting even more higher peaks considering the economy getting (back) on track. Moreover, increased adoption in tier 2 and 3 cities as well as in remote cities and COVID-19 further accelerate the overall adoption for e-commerce deliveries,” he added. Bhoi added that the company expects a peak of up to 1.5 million shipments for Xpressbees on peak days during the festive rush.

Typhoon Kompasu has resulted in the worst container shipping traffic jam in months, stretching throughout Southeast Asia and may take weeks to unravel. Although port operations are largely back to normal in Shenzhen and Hong Kong after the tropical storm’s passing, the total container ship count off the two vital hubs had ballooned to 271 as of early Friday, the highest count recorded since Bloomberg News started tracking the data in April. At least 109 ships were meanwhile reported as anchored and waiting to enter the ports, up from 67 on Thursday. “The supply chain is very stretched, with no buffer, so any little event will cause another big problem,” James Teo, Bloomberg Intelligence, said. “There are too many choke points.” Teo expects port congestion likely to continue until at least Feb. 2022.

o9 Solutions Inc., an AI software platform provider for transforming planning and decision-making, reported a 97% increase in Q3 2021 bookings, which translates into an almost three-fold increase in year-to-date bookings compared to the same period in 2020. These results show o9’s continued strong growth momentum. Upsells to existing customers drove 20% of the bookings activity year-to-date at o9. This included clients that expanded their initial purchase multiple times within the year, reinforcing the rapid value proposition delivered by o9’s platform. EMEA and APAC were strong contributors to bookings in Q3, signaling o9’s growing market share within these regions. New customer bookings in Q3 2021 were well diversified across a range of enterprise sizes and o9’s core verticals with significant strength in manufacturing. During the quarter, the company had successful deployments in new industry verticals, including one of the largest global telecom companies and a large global pharmaceutical company. There were new deployments at one of the largest beverage companies in the world, where o9 is replacing a global legacy planning solution. Overall, the quarter saw customer deployments across demand, supply chain, integrated business planning, and commercial planning – reaffirming the flexibility of the platform to deliver value for a variety of planning and decision-making use cases across the enterprise.

Gandhi Automations has earned recognition from the Government of India for being a Star Export House. The company headquartered in Mumbai is well-renowned as the global ‘Made-In-India’ brand across the industrial manufacturing domain. Gandhi Automations has been specializing in designing, manufacturing, exporting, and installing industrial high-speed doors, dock levelers & dock shelters, sectional overhead doors, rolling shutters, aircraft hangar doors, and shipyard doors, serving almost every industry across the globe. By exporting their products to more than 30 countries, Gandhi Automations is actively contributing to India’s growth through foreign exchange. They are also promoting India as the next manufacturing hub of the world by consistently delivering the best-in-class entrance automation products and loading bay equipment. Samir Gandhi, MD, confirmed this accreditation by the Government of India. He further commented, “We are thrilled to be a global made-in-India brand. We are thankful to our dedicated employees and our customers for believing in us and our vision”.

Union Minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbanand Sonowal has announced forming of a Special Purpose vehicle (SPV) for development of a Multimodal Logistics Park (MMLP) at VOC Port in Chennai. The MMLP to be developed through Public Private Partnership with the SPV providing land and connectivity and the actual MMLP infrastructure to be developed by a private developer. He said, all the three stake holders viz, Chennai Port Authority, TIDCO and NHAI will be equity partners in the proposed SVP. The Minister informed that equity contribution/investment of the Chennai Port is the cost of the land amounting to Rs 167 crore, NHAI/NHIDCL contribution is Rs l30 crore and that of State govt. through TIDCO is Rs 50 crore. Speaking at the virtual MoU signing in, Sonowal said, V.O. Chidambaranar Port, the economic engine of South Tamilnadu, has proposed for setting up of Multimodal Logistics Park due to its advantages such as excellent Rail-road connectivity, proximity to Main Sea Route, all weather operational conditions, and geographic position to link Eastern coast with the Western coast. The Multimodal Logistics Park would facilitate infrastructure for enabling seamless multimodal freight transfer, and specialized storage solutions, such as cold storage, warehouses equipped with mechanized material handling and intermodal transfer terminals for containers, bulk and break-bulk cargo. Further, the MMLP would be offering value-added services such as Customs clearance, bonded storage yards, quarantine zones, testing facilities, warehousing management services, post-manufacturing activities such as kitting and final assembly, grading, sorting, labelling, packaging etc.

Container Company of Bangladesh Limited (CCBL) is going to build a rail Inland Container Depot (ICD) in Chittagong to boost the transportation of containers by trains. Local terminal operator Saif Powertec Limited will build and operate the ICD on behalf of CCBL for 20 years before handing it over to CCBL, according to a deal that will be signed on 19 October. The new ICD will have a capacity of 100,000TEU a year and will be built in more than 86,150m² of railway-owned land in the Halishahar area on the outskirts of the port city of Chittagong. Currently, there are 19 ICDs in the country which handle 1.6 million TEU a year. CCBL invited bids from the interested local and global operators in February for the construction and operation of the ICD. Fourteen companies, including four foreign players, submitted bids from where Saif Powertec has been selected.