Category Archives: Supply Chain

Snowman Logistics Limited has completed the construction of a temperature-controlled warehouse at Coimbatore and the facility has become operational during February 2022. The total capacity of the facility is 4020 Pallets. It is a multi-temperature facility designed to store products ranging from ambient temperature to -25 Deg Centigrade with 8 chambers, 6 loading bays with related infrastructure that includes G+5 racking system, modern handling equipment and ample refrigerated truck parking space. The facility will mainly cater to the storage, handling and transportation of quick service restaurants, poultry, ready-to-eat food, ice cream, dairy products, confectionery & bakery products, seafood, fruits & vegetables, pharma, and other products. Snowman also starts its SnowServe facility – a fulfilment centre for Amazon India in Pune. Amazon will be using this facility for the delivery of FMCG perishables including vegetables, fruits, eggs, frozen food, and groceries in the city. The facility is spread across 12,000 sqft area and has sorting, grading, packing and labeling process lines. It is also equipped with storage for grocery, FMCG and temperature controlled products. It is a multi-temperature facility designed to store products ranging from ambient temperature to -25 Deg Centigrade with 3 no of chambers, 3 loading bays with related infrastructure that includes racking system, modern handling equipment and ample refrigerated truck parking space. “Snowman has been catering to a comprehensive network of reputed clients and meeting their temperature-controlled environment requirement through technology-enabled facilities and platforms. Our know-how on handling food and complex operations has helped us perform in ecom fulfillment centres and deliver compliance, quality and efficiency. Our association with Amazon gets stronger with the functioning of Pune facility after successfully delivering across Mumbai and Delhi.” says Sunil Nair, …

In yet another acquisition, Shiprocket has acquired a majority stake in Glaucus Supply Chain Solutions Pvt. Ltd., a leading supply chain management company, and plans to merge in due course. The transaction will allow Shiprocket to accelerate the development of solutions that will improve speed, accuracy, and efficiency in the post-purchase process across trade channels. “In an environment where it is becoming increasingly important for every brand to delight their customers with both products and services, it is essential to build innovative, resilient solutions to unlock the next phase of growth for the industry at large. There is a very clear need to remove the fulfillment complexity across B2B and B2C channels for our clients and help them focus on what they do best – make and sell products. We are thrilled to announce our acquisition of Glaucus Supply Chain Solutions Pvt. Ltd. With our technology prowess, capital availability, and ability to focus on solving problems for our current and future clients, we aspire to become the country’s largest provider of fulfillment services. We welcome the Glaucus team onboard and look forward to working with them.” said Saahil Goel, Co-Founder, and CEO of Shiprocket Glaucus provides enterprise-grade fulfillment services to mid-market brands supported by a mature combination of processes, geographic spread, quality reporting, and proprietary technology. B2B distribution, sales return management, D2C marketplace fulfillment, and managed transportation are a few of the services offered by Glaucus’ key. The company has an established presence in Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ludhiana, Faridabad, and Sonipat.

Coimbatore and nearby areas that are known for presence of manufacturing industries in various sectors will soon benefit from modern logistics facilities. The Central Government has identified Coimbatore as one of the two locations in the State for a multi-modal logistics park. The park is expected to meet the logistics needs of not only those involved in foreign trade but also for domestic cargo movement. An official of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) said, “The park would come up on 100 to 120 acres in Coimbatore district. The Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation would identify the land. Simultaneously, two private companies were preparing a detailed project report and the NHAI would develop the infrastructure. We hope that bids will be called in a year to develop the park.” The park will have warehouses and proximity and access for air, rail, and road cargo movement. The land will be identified taking into consideration several such factors, the official added. Raja M. Shanmugham, president of Tiruppur Exporters Association, said this was a much-needed infrastructure. The government should ensure that costs reduce for the exporters because of the facility. “Such infrastructure are meant to support a region’s trade. So the infrastructure should be created first and these will gain the trade’s patronage over a period of time,” he said.

India’s leading commercial EV manufacturer Altigreen raises ~Rs 300 crore (approx. US$ 40 Million) through its Series A round, to boost its EV manufacturing and launch new products including LCVs and strengthen its countrywide presence. With its road-ready commercial EVs, powered by its proprietary drivetrain technology the company is already changing the face of last-mile delivery and, with this funding, will rapidly accelerate towards its next phase of growth. The freshly raised funds will be utilized to ramp up production capabilities, accelerate R&D, fast-paced EV adoption, and develop a robust Pan-India network to offer the best and cleanest last-mile transportation solutions in India. The investment is led by Sixth Sense Ventures, along with Reliance New Energy (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited), Xponentia Capital, Accurant International, USA, and Momentum Venture Capital, Singapore.

Commenting on the Monetary Policy Statement, keeping the Repo Rate unchanged, Dr A Sakthivel, President, FIEO said that the RBI has struck a nice balance between growth & inflation and evaluating the two, has not tinkered with the rates. At the same time, extension of the Emergency Credit Linked Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) by the Hon’ble Finance Minister in the Budget 2022-23 will augment further the flow of credit to the exports sector. The President, FIEO said that RBI also acknowledged the challenges of containers and labour shortage and high freight rate, which had led to revision in the trade growth projection for 2022-23 at 6%. He added that the demand side of Indian exports is extremely encouraging and the export sector is all set to repeat its spectacular performance in the next financial year as well despite logistics constraints. Dr Sakthivel hoped that since the countries globally are now opening up, the logistics issues will be taken care of leading to reduction in the cycle of exports. At the same time, we should look into setting up container manufacturing in our own country to add another feather in our “Atma Nirbhar” strategy particularly as coastal manufacturing in the country is also gaining traction. The FIEO chief said that while the current value of Rupee is providing support to exports, we have to be watchful as recent capital outflows in many emerging economies have resulted in deprecation of their currencies significantly making them much more competitive.

Xpressbees, a third-party end-to-end logistics service provider, has raised $300 million in a Series F funding round. Led by private equity funds Blackstone Growth, TPG Growth and ChrysCapital, existing investors, Investcorp and Norwest Venture Partners, also participated in the Series F round. With this round, the total amount of funds raised by Xpressbees exceeds $500 million. Avendus Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Xpressbees on this transaction. “We are excited to welcome our new partners Blackstone Growth, TPG Growth, and ChrysCapital in our growth journey. With their vast network and operational expertise, we believe that they will further fuel our efforts in pursuing newer opportunities and will help expand our footprint.” said, Amitava Saha, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Xpressbees. Xpressbees will to use the capital to fulfil its vision to evolve into a full-service logistics organization, support the business in its next phase of growth, product development, and hiring talent. The brand has progressively built best-in-class technology platforms, an extensive network reach, a seamless last mile management system, and has experienced a near 100% growth in revenue on a year-to-year basis.

Safexpress, India’s largest supply chain & logistics company, has launched its ultra-modern Logistics Park in Hyderabad, Telangana. This state-of-the-art facility is strategically located on Nagpur Hyderabad NH – 44. On this occasion, senior dignitaries from Safexpress were present to launch the Safexpress Logistics Park at Hyderabad, Telangana. The facility is spread over a land area of 3 Lakh square feet, enabled with ultra-modern transshipment and 3PL facilities, which will boost storage & warehousing needs of this region while providing for faster connectivity. The new Logistics Park is cross-dock, equipped with loading and unloading of over 50 vehicles simultaneously. It has a column-less span of over 80 feet, which facilitates uninterrupted movement of goods within the facility. To enable all-weather loading & unloading of goods, the facility is equipped with 16 feet wide Cantilever Shed. The facility is equipped with an integrated rainwater harvesting system, has a dedicated green zone and will be using sunlight during the daytime to conserve energy. Operations at the Logistics facility is highly streamlined, which ensures the country’s fastest transit-time from Telangana to all destinations across India. The physical infrastructure will be backed by a robust IT infrastructure and a very efficient warehouse management system.

The implementation framework for PM GatiShakti national master plan is taking its final shape at a faster pace and after April 1 this year, every infrastructure project is expected to route through the network planning group (NPG) constituted under this initiative, a top government official said. The PM GatiShakti plan was announced last year with an aim to break departmental silos and bring in more holistic and integrated planning and execution of projects with a view to address the issues of multi-modal and last-mile connectivities. This will help in bringing down the logistics cost, Secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Anurag Jain said. “Things are in readiness. the empowered Group of Secretaries (EGOS) and NPG are constituted and the TSU (Technical Support Unit) is more or less in place. So the structure is there,” he said. The secretary added that the department has conducted one round of training with the departments of the government of India and hold regional conferences across the states, barring the North-East, where it would happen soon. “So we are on track. We have asked states to put in their layers (on the PM GatiShakti national master plan portal). So we are targeting to get all the layers (like land records) of the states also on the portal by March 31…What we intend to do is that after April 1, 2022, every project which is more than ₹ 500 crore and is an infrastructure project will be routed through this (NPG),” Jain said.

Presenting the Budget in Parliament, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, “The Special Economic Zones Act will be replaced with a new legislation that will enable the states to become partners in ‘Development of Enterprise and Service Hubs’. This will cover all large existing and new industrial enclaves to optimally utilise available infrastructure and enhance competitiveness of exports.” “Alongside, we will also undertake reforms in Customs Administration of SEZs and it shall henceforth be fully IT driven and function on the Customs National Portal with a focus on higher facilitation and with only risk-based checks. This will ease doing business by SEZ units considerably. This reform shall be implemented by 30th September 2022,” the minister said during the speech. IT industry body NASSCOM said in a tweet, “SEZs have tremendously contributed to India’s exports & created additional employment opportunities. We look forward to the new legislation on SEZ Act as this will lead to holistic development of enterprises and enhance competitive exports.”

Blume Global, a leading provider of true end-to-end supply chain visibility technology solutions, has experienced exponential growth in India in less than two years. Blume India will also be making a continued investment in the region as part of Blume’s acquisition of LiveSource, a leading multi-enterprise supply chain business network for complex manufacturers. With LiveSource, Blume now provides complete, end-to-end supply chain visibility, extending the standard definition of visibility beyond the transportation of goods. Blume is the only worldwide supply chain technology provider that can support customers with real-time visibility from sourcing and procurement all the way through order delivery. “Blume India is proud to serve our customers with the only neutral, single-source visibility solution that covers the entire supply chain, giving our users unique and unrivaled transparency and insight at a time when congestion and capacity constraints are still common,” said Sudhir Unnikrishnan, senior vice president and managing director of India at Blume Global. “Though we were presented with the challenges of navigating through the pandemic, our ultimate successes were testament to the hard work and resiliency of Blume Global India, and we look forward to the bright spots ahead of us as we continue growing.”