Category Archives: Supply Chain

The warehousing sector’s meteoric rise to prominence in India was spurred by the introduction of GST leading to consolidation and the central government’s decision to grant ‘infrastructure status’ to the logistics sector including warehousing. Furthermore, with 100% FDI permitted in warehousing and logistics alongside maturated state-level warehousing policies, the sector has been seeing rapid institutionalization and subsequent inflow of major investments. The investments grew from USD 675 million during 2014-2016 to USD 2.3 billion from FY 2017-2019 in the top 8 cities of India. In 2020, the pandemic reinforced a structural shift in consumer preferences – accelerating the penetration of online sales even in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, thus giving a huge boost to the sector. Any e-commerce operation needs a strong and robust supply chain network, of which, modern warehousing forms a critical component. As global e-commerce companies rapidly look to expand in their battle for retail supremacy, investments in infrastructure like warehousing; especially well located, modern, compliant with very high construction quality; will remain a top priority. In a previous report, we have also estimated that e-commerce companies themselves will require at the very least 25 million sq. ft. of Grade-A warehousing stock in 2025 across the country which in 2020 was 9.3 million square feet.

E-commerce giant Amazon, on Tuesday, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Industries and Mines Department, Government of Gujarat with an aim to help drive e-commerce exports from the state, an official release stated. Under the signed MoU, Amazon will train and onboard MSMEs from the state on Amazon Global Selling and enable them to sell their unique Made in India products to millions of Amazon customers across 200-odd countries and territories. This will allow the home-grown businesses to get access to the global market. They will benefit from Amazon’s distribution capabilities and global footprint to scale rapidly and build sustainable export businesses. The e-commerce giant will host training, webinars and workshops for exporters from key MSME clusters like Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Bharuch and Rajkot and others.

Supply Chain tech-based startup, Elixia Tech Solutions Ltd, has secured USD 1 million in its Pre-Series A funding led by RVCF and other angel investors. With this investment, Elixia Tech is planning to scale up its presence in both domestic and international markets. Elixia Tech had introduced its first product in Vehicle Telematics space, followed by a completely digital and efficient suite of supply chain solutions, under the umbrella of Supply Chain Control Tower. It provides interlinked softbots for all segments of logistics, warehouse and inventory that control supply chain planning and execution to reduce costs and bring visibility for goods in-transit and provide actionable business intelligence using Machine Learning. Announcing the investment, Elixia Tech’s Founder, Sanket Sheth added, “This is a very important milestone. While supply chains have evolved from on-ground manual operations to something as advanced as digital twins, majority of companies are still stuck somewhere in between. With the world going through the impact of external changes, it has now become even more imperative to bring in real-time visibility, optimization & transparency in the supply chain. Thus, I believe that now is the right time and the right place to get the right products to make waves in the Indian as well as Global Logistics Market.”

E-commerce platforms like Amazon India, Flipkart and Zomato, ahead of the festive season, have begun adding new members to their blue-collar arsenal. As the pandemic-era curbs have fuelled strong growth in online ordering, the e-commerce giants are luring them with joining and performance-linked bonuses to efficiently meet consumer demand. This festive season, the e-commerce companies and logistics operators are expecting a sales estimated to rise as much as 15% more than the pre-pandemic festive season in 2019, said Nilabh Kapoor, business head, OLX People, a recruitment service provider. “With businesses recovering in most parts, hiring of temporary workers has seen 3-4X growth in the recent past and is expected to double during the festive season to keep up with rising demand across platforms,” Kapoor said.

Safexpress, India’s largest supply chain & logistics company has launched its ultra-modern Logistics Park in Siliguri. This state-of-the-art facility is strategically located in Gadheaganj, Near NH – 27. On this occasion, senior dignitaries from Safexpress including Rubal Jain, Managing Director, S.K Jain- Vice President, Rakesh Pareek, General Manager, West Bengal & Sikkim, Nilotpal Saha, Area Manager- Siliguri, Ashish Pathak, Area Manager – West Bengal North & Sikkim, Vivekanand Atri, Operation Head – Siliguri and including others were present. Better known as the “Gateway of Northeast India”, Siliguri has been a thriving hub for Agricultural products and Pharmaceutical products. Siliguri is located closer to Nepal, Bhutan & Bangladesh borders and 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.

DoKaSch Temperature Solutions has opened a new service station in India. It is located at GMR Hyderabad Air Cargo terminal. Strategically, the Hyderabad Airport location is a very important network station for the global supply of lifesaving medicines given Hyderabad’s status as a major pharma production and export hub. With the new location in India, DoKaSch strengthens its network in the region and globally. In turn, the solution provider contributes to a reliable cool chain for highly sensitive pharmaceutical products, especially during the pandemic. Hyderabad was chosen because of its outstanding importance for the global pharmaceutical industry. The city’s Genome Valley business district is a hub for research and development as well as manufacturing for pharma and lifesaving medicines. Several key pharmaceutical companies are located here and export their products to the USA, EU, Japan and other major countries across the globe. The upcoming Pharma City, an extensive industrial park for pharmaceuticals, will further increase the city’s importance.

Om Logistics Limited, has acquired Transafe Services Limited, a group company of Balmer, Lawrie & Co. Ltd., with interests in manufacturing, Logistics and leasing. TranSafe started its journey with the business of leasing of various types of containers for road and rail transportation of goods. Later, it forayed into the business of specialty container manufacturing and logistics services. The company manufactured various tank containers, like, oil/water/milk tanks, car-carrier capsules and other specialty containers for companies/ institutions, such as ONGC, ISRO, private rail operators and defense sector. Transafe is also into the manufacturing of bunk houses, to meet the increase in oil exploration activity. OM Group is a full-service transportation & logistics company with presence in 85 countries, over 1500 locations, 20 million square feet space and more than 5000 efficient employees. OM Logistics Limited enjoys an annual turnover of 1500 cr. and has an association with a significant number of world’s best-known brands.

Digitisation has always been important in enhancing efficiency and increasing real time visibility in every part o the value chain. Says Ashish Asaf, MD, S.A. Consultants and Forwarders, “The pandemic has accelerated the digitisation by years. It is no more a choice but a necessity. However I would insist on building a balance between technology and human expertise. Cloud based data has become the norm. also the pandemic has changed the perception towards technology, which was earlier considered a cost is now pondered upon as investment to improve logistics operation. We need to train our people in such a way that they treat technology as an enabler rather than a burden.”

Each adversity brings us a bigger opportunity! Pandemic did the same. It was like 4-5years of digitalisation packed into one and delivered to all of us. Says Amar More, CEO, Kale Logistics solutions, “Earlier words like Artificial Intelligence, IoT’s, Blockchain etc. scared all of us. But with pandemic, these same words have become the norm. India has a drone policy now. This should have happened long time back since the world relies on India for technology. It is considered as the world’s IT back-office. Today, with pandemic many logistics companies have already adopted various technologies to remain operational. There was tremendous increase in digitisation in India.

Redefining Air in the last one-and-half-year as Agility, Innovation and Resilience. Tushar Jani, Chairman, Cargo Service Centre Group, says “The cargo industry needs a human face of technology. If our mindset is ready to adopt technology, what the primitive technology in the face of email and others have achieved, think of a situation where with integrated technology approach as whole, what transformation will it do to the Air cargo industry. I think we can be number one in showing the technology path to the world. We have the capability to do it. All three pointers, Agility, Innovation and Resilience can be achieved through technology. After digitalisation, our next step should be digitisation. If we do that, we will be increasing our cargo infrastructure by at least one hundred times!”