Category Archives: Supply Chain

KredX, an integrated financial services provider announced its vision of becoming a one-stop solution for supply chain financing for businesses. As a part of this rebranding, the company unveiled a new logo and a revamped website. The company has developed cutting-edge innovative products such as discounting of unpaid invoices etc. that has been fostering India’s fintech ecosystem. “Customers are the core of our business and as a customer-first company, we are committed to delivering innovative solutions as per their requirements,” said Manish Kumar, CEO and Co-founder of KredX. “We realised that our customers wanted us to take a deep-dive into supply chain finance and to become an end-to-end solutions provider that can cater to all aspects of supply chain financing and not just invoice discounting. Therefore, our rebranding initiative is a sincere effort to showcase this change and our commitment to the cause.” The company offers a host of customisable solutions ranging from enterprise finance to working capital and channel financing solutions for businesses, large and small, operating within the supply chain ecosystem. Recently, the company has also introduced a slew of new products catering to every player in the supply chain ecosystem – Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) for all kinds of online and offline B2B payments, Import – Export Financing with licensing from IFSCA to launch India’s first ITFS platform, and Capvel for enterprises looking to optimise their cash flow while further strengthening the alternative fixed income instruments offerings for investors on the platform.

Safexpress has launched its ultra-modern Logistics Park in Gujarat. This state-of-the-art facility is strategically located Between Bhayla and Dholka Industrial Area on Ahmedabad Bhavnagar, National Highway – 47. On this occasion, senior dignitaries from Safexpress were present to launch the Safexpress Logistics Park at Gundi, Gujarat. These included S.K Jain, Vice President, Narayan Jayan, Associate Vice President– Gujarat, Manoj Mittal, Corporate Head, Cargo Relationship Management including others were present. Gujarat has emerged as an important economic and industrial hub in India. It is crucial from supply chain & logistics perspective. This new Logistics Park will serve as a nodal point for logistics and to provide for the transitional connective facility with all Indian states, especially with nearby districts and manufacturing hubs. Safexpress Logistics facility in Gundi, Gujarat is spread over a land area of 4 Lakh 30 thousand 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 160 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.

Federation of Indian Export Organisations signed a MoU with RebelCorp for the purpose of facilitating the individuals and MSMEs including the new exporters, enterprises and artisans have an online digital presence with the tools needed to do business in today’s market environment at a very affordable cost and without having any technical or coding knowledge with the help of RebelCorp’s No Code, All-in-one Easy to Use Website Builder. Saad Khan, Founder & COO, RebelCorp said, “Team RebelCorp is thrilled to be a part of this journey to help more than 30,000 members of FIEO in helping them create a digital identity that they can easily manage themselves and help them in growing their global customer base. The RebelCorp technology platform will enable all exporters to enter the next decade with all the tools they are going to need to do business digitally for 2022 and beyond.” Mr Akash Chaturvedi, Founder & CEO added that they would be designing special website templates exclusively for the exporter members of FIEO, keeping in mind their special requirement as exporters catering to the global market and need for integrated e-commerce module at very highly subsidised subscription plans.” Sujata Uchil, Regional Head, FIEO Western Region while signing the MoU mentioned that FIEO will be inviting RebelCorp to organise dedicated workshops and training programs for member exporters to encourage them to own and manage their own website with ease.

Seafrigo Group, the global specialist and leader in temperature-controlled food logistics, has announced that it will open a new dedicated facility in New Jersey in 2022. Seafrigo Group already offers a full spectrum of Food Safety Inspection Services for imports and exports into the USA and it’s part of the Group’s commitment to guarantee high quality standards to its customers. As an approved inspection center at the Port of NY/NJ it is able to partially or totally manage shipments across a range of different services including drayage from/to port or, storage (Chilled, Frozen and Ambient), Lab test requested USDA, special labelling for different foreign languages and repacking to ensure freight is secure for export onforwarding such as for e-Commerce customers Already operating from four facilities in the same area, the new state-of-the-art 85,000 sq foot facility will provide additional, fully automated capacity in order to cater to customer fulfilment requirements. Seafrigo Group will also install its own Dry Ice making production plant within the facility in order to be able to maintain all frozen products at the correct temperature.

Industrial and warehousing space absorption stood at 44 mn sq. ft in 2021 to include 35.1 mn sq. ft from Tier I cities and 8.6 mn sq. ft from Tier II & III cities. Inspite of Covid restrictions and lockdowns impacting construction activities, India witnessed a fresh supply of 45 mn sq. ft. in 2021 where 36 mn sq. ft was from Tier I cities and 8.9 mn sq. ft from Tier II & III cities, as per data released by International real estate advisory firm Savills India. Similar to 2020, 3PL and e-commerce sectors continued to drive warehousing demand accounting 62% of the total absorption in 2021, followed by manufacturing sector at 14%. Among the major cities in India, Delhi NCR led with the highest absorption in 2021 at 18% followed by Pune at 15%. Mumbai and Bangalore saw absorptions at 14% and 11% respectively, while tier II & tier III cities accounted for 20%.

India stood at the overall trade deficit of USD 64.4 billion for the October-December quarter – a substantially higher mark as compared to USD 44.1 billion in July-September quarter. But all is not gloomy as EXIM activity hit an all time high in December with an impressive elevation from November. Merchandise exports increased by 38.1% (Y-O-Y) and 12% (over November) and the merchandise exports increased by 37% (Y-O-Y) and 24.1% (over November). These statistics – though keeping the trade deficit at elevated – decreased the gap between exports and imports to USD 21.91 billion in December. “We believe this sets the stage for the current account deficit to widen to 3.4% of GDP in October-December quarter.” said Nomura For a full financial year, Nomura estimates the trade deficits to hover around 1.6% of GDP, which is a good news since a current account deficit within 2% of GDP is generally seen as sustainable. If experts are to be believed, the aforesaid numbers of EXIM activity have been a result of high commodity prices and a strong demand, which in turn, kept the trade activity up-heaved. But they also warn against the high deficit percentage and the risks of sticky deficits, which should not be taken lightly.

The latest report by the Indian Foundation of Transport Research & Training (IFTRT) says, there has been a 15%-20% extra arrival of fresh fruits and vegetables into APMCs. “Factory output and exports have also remained brisk helping truckers to post robust revenue for last two quarters,” said SP Singh, senior fellow & coordinator, IFTRT. The migration to CNG is also being seen as a factor in helping transporters improve their margins. “There have been large scale migration of 10-15.5 tonne medium and light commercial vehicles from diesel fuel to CNG which has further helped the fleet owners of this category make more money per tonne/km,” said Singh. The report said that the flat diesel price throughout December and the buoyancy in the overall economy in agri-food business, trade commerce, and industry including exports have allowed the increase in truck rentals.

$100-billion Tata group’s Chairman N Chandrasekaran puts supply chain resilience as the company’s top strategy theme along with Digital, new energy, and health. While giving his New Year address to the group’s 800,000 employees, Chandrasekaran said businesses and society must adapt to the virus by preparing as “best we can for new outbreaks and variants. We are seeing this now with the spread of Omicron”. The bygone year has been simpler and financially stronger for the company. Chandrasekaran puts the spotlight on the group’s sustainability progress while speaking of the last years and says, “We have made good progress addressing our carbon footprint and positioning our companies to benefit from revolutionary new technologies. Our most important milestone this year culminated in our bid to win Air India. It is indeed a historic moment,”. Speaking of the way forward, he said, “Our strategy, looking ahead, has four themes: digital, new energy, supply chain resilience, and health. Our companies are already adapting to these changes, and we are witnessing a stronger performance.”

National Highways and Logistics Management Ltd (NHLML), a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) fully owns, plans to award 15 more contracts on multimodal logistics parks over the next three years in public-private partnership (PPP) mode. The parks will have a 50:50 funding model. “There are 35 multimodal logistics parks planned across the country with a capital allocation of Rs 50,000 crore. Tenders are being issued for Chennai, Bengaluru, Indore, and Nagpur this fiscal year. The Jogigopha logistics park in Assam has started construction (this is over and above the 15 to be awarded),” Prakash Gaur, chief executive officer (CEO), NHLML, said. The SPV, formed under the guidance of the road ministry, aims to address typical cost overruns with infrastructure projects. Cost overruns happen because of the time lag between awards of projects and their commencement. This logistics project is part of the Rs 7-trillion mega infrastructure project launched this month.

rThe fiscal year 2021-22 is expected to end with merchandise exports of US$ 400 Bn. As this would be on a high base for FY’ 2022-23 unlike last year, said FIEO President, Dr A Sakthivel. Thus, export growth of 30-35% on such numbers would be difficult particularly as additional exports may require augmenting the capacity as well. Moreover, the spectacular increase in global trade by about 22%, buoyed by high prices of commodities, as witnessed in 2021 will not be there to provide the tail wind to our exports. However, at the same time, since our share in global trade is still less than 2%, we still have a long way to go. Much will depend on whether we would be able to contain Covid-19 through massive vaccination across the globe and be able to create required capacity, which will decide whether we should look for 15-20% growth or even more for the next financial year, added Dr Sakthivel. FIEO President further added that we expect the global consumption to go up substantially in 2022, albeit the pandemic is controlled. The good thing with our exports has been a very balanced growth across sectors both in traditional exports as well as sunrise sectors of exports during the current fiscal. Therefore, in the next year as well, we feel that exports growth will be widespread and exports to NAFTA, Europe, Middle-East, Oceania will continue to boom particularly as we should look at concluding Free Trade Agreements with UK & UAE soon and CEPA & CECA with Canada & Australia respectively in 2022, said Dr Sakthivel.