Portall Infosystems has collaborated with GOCON in order to provide trucking services on PCS1x; a cloud based new generation technology with user-friendly interface The service is already live on PCS 1x. GOCON, a digital transport aggregator platform that connects operators (Trailers and Truckers) with shippers, has on-boarded the collaborative P-CaSo platform. The company is known for its ability to deliver effective transportation solutions vide their own and leased fleet across the country. Shirishchandra Shah, Chief Product Officer, Portall, said “Coming from the well known transportation fleet owner Roadwings – Portall has good reason to believe GOCON will serve the trade well. We thank IPA for their support to add trucking services as a functionality on PCS 1x to better serve the ecosystem.” “We have an established transport company with a large owned and leased fleet who have now embraced digital business. We are pleased to tie up with Portall whose work in the digital landscape of India is well known and appreciated.” Pratyaksh Sureka, Founder, GOCON. IPA (Indian Ports Association), an autonomous body under the Ministry Of Shipping, which launched the PCS 1x in Dec 2018 has been working closely with the trade to expand functionality and features and the addition of this service has ensured that the users can get attractive rates which can help bring down the logistics costs.

“Unless innovative transportation models are executed, high logistics management cost will remain,” says, Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways, addressing an e-symposium on logistics management under the e-symposia series on emergent North East India. Speaking specifically on logistics management, Gadkari stresses the need to augment water transport considering its cost effectiveness as compared to road or railway mode of transportation while sharing his insights on possibility of boosting Ro-Ro and Ropax water travel mode for easy connectivity, and cutting short distance coverage using the mighty Brahmaputra. Gadkari believes that institutes have a relatable responsibility to oversee the socio-economic growth of the region. He says, “This can only be achieved through cooperation, coordination and communication with stakeholders of the region.” Also ruing on the country’s extensive import requirement despite the presence of minerals like copper, aluminium, gold, and coal as examples, Gadkari felt that impetus is on management institutes to contribute management strategies and solutions by comprehensively assessing the strengths and weaknesses related to industrial uplift.

In order to bridge the supply and demand of road logistics via a digital marketplace, Kuehne+Nagel has launched its AI-enabled road logistics platform eTrucknow in India in a webinar with the participation of top company officials and its vendors and distributors from across the country. With eTrucknow, shippers get access to a simplified quotation and booking process for domestic road logistics shipments. Once the shipper provides the shipment details, the AI-enabled engine streamlines and automates the quotation comparison process by validating multiple data points and presents the customer with the most competitive quotation and route. “The intuitive and easy-to-use digital solution has been developed based on our customers’ needs and market trends. The platform’s functionalities are continuously evolving to create an optimal customer experience from an ad-hoc shipment to the regular large volume of shipments,” says Chellan Ganesan, Senior Vice President – Road Logistics, Kuehne+Nagel, Asia Pacific.

“The most striking thing that has emerged from this entire lockdown is that it has given every company an opportunity to improve their performance, way of working and re-understanding the entire operations and possible marketing as well,” says, Chander Agarwal, Managing Director, TCI Express at the third edition of CargoTalk digital conclave. Interestingly, with the use of technology we have had the lowest cost ever in the history of the company in spite of the fuel prices going up. This crisis has made us much stronger; all the things which were left undone were able to be done now for the betterment of the company and this has made our foundation stronger.

Talking about the challenges faced by industry when the lockdown was announced, Aditya Shah, Executive Director, V-Trans India, says that the period of end of March and mid of April which was filled with uncertain times, at the CargoTalk’s third digital conclave. He continues, “Business came to a standstill, trucks were stranded, and cargo was held up whether it is road, airport or seaport. However, logistics being such an essential industry for the backbone of the country, it had to bounce back very fast. The government has ensured the delivery of essentials, right from the beginning, and slowly and steadily also enabled the entire ecosystem around essentials. Things have started moving pretty fast for the industry, however, it was filled with challenges; from obtaining local permissions to ensuring the safety of people and also if people are in place to operate. The challenges which we as an industry have faced have been immense but still the resilience and hard work with which each one of us stood up deserves some acknowledgement.”

“Covid-19 has brought a new change in our lives,” says, Ashok Goyal, Managing Director, BLR Logistiks at the third edition of CargoTalk’s digital conclave. He informs, “When the lockdown started in March, industry got into a very bad shape and everyone was worried about the future. However, we have gone through it well. If we look at last three months, the progress is phenomenal in terms of how economy has picked up and businesses are back to 75 per cent level. Hence, I see no reason why are not we going to grow the way we were growing earlier as we can also see the younger generation taking over the business, especially road transport which is even considered to be a tough one.” “The crisis has taught us collaboration and has brought everyone closer. We never used to have this kind of unity which we have now and big players are taking help of smaller players in the area where they are not strong” he adds.

With a leasable area of 3.2 million sqft and an estimated investment of Rs 900 crore, Welspun One Logistics Parks (WOLP) has launched its maiden 110 acre Grade A warehousing park in Bhiwandi, Maharastra. The company has also entered into an MoU with the State Government of Maharashtra under the ‘Magnetic Maharashtra Initiative’ for this project, which is in advanced stages of receiving necessary approvals under the Integrated Logistics Parks (ILP) policy of the state of Maharashtra; making it one the first of its kind fully compliant projects in Bhiwandi. This development will create an upwards of 2700 multi-level job opportunities. Anshul Singhal, Managing Director, Welspun One says, “Our park in Bhiwandi is well suited to meet the requirements of a large number of end users including e-commerce, 3PL, FMCG/FMCD, modern retail, pharma and thus far has been very well received by large occupiers. We are also seeing significant interest from international and private equity investors, both at the project and overall platform level.”

“The extraordinary crisis always leads to extraordinary opportunities,” says Amar More, CEO, Kale Logistics Solutions at CargoTalk’s third digital conclave. Taking about the role of technology in the time crisis, he says, “If we look at the attitude towards digitisation; technology has moved from nice to have thing to necessary evil to now a business driver. The role of technology is increasing in the industry; those who had the right technology could operate in those pandemic days.” “Paper is just not a piece, it means delays, environmental damage and in some places it means corruption and now it is a death threat because COVID-19 stays on paper for three to four days. India is world’s IT backbone and we should be leading the world rather than following the world,” he adds.

Air cargo is a multi decade industry but what we have achieved in last four months is many times of what we have achieved in the last 4-5 decades, says, Saurabh Kumar, CEO, Hyderabad Air Cargo at CargoTalk’s third digital conclave. He says, “Last four months have been a great time for us to think and innovate. If we look at digitalisation, air cargo industry has started talking about new initiatives to reduce paper and to digitalise the processes, four to five years back. However, the process of adoption has been slow. If we compare ourselves with other industries as well, air cargo has been slightly slow in terms of adopting technologies.” “We started thinking about digitisation in last four months when confinement has not left us with any other option,” adds Kumar.

Calling digitisation an enabler and not a revenue generator, Keku Bomi Gazder, CEO, AAICLAS, says, at CargoTalk’s third digital conclave, “It is a value add to our industry which is long due. We are the land of producing digitisation and yet we are not 100 per cent digitised. It seems to be a bit of a challenge to understand why we are not moving into a 100 per cent at least into an e-airway bill mode.” He continues, “We need to think even beyond paperless or digitisation and that is to do with being contactless; which means less interaction in the physical world.” Gazder believes that the pandemic seems is an opportunistic moment for us to look at digitisation seriously.