Category Archives: Supply Chain

In order to deliver an integrated solution to eliminate friction in complex global supply chains, FourKites have partnered with o9 Solutions. The idea is to augment o9’s Control Tower solution with FourKites’ real-time in-transit freight tracking. The partnership enables customers to receive, in o9, proactive notifications of freight disruptions coming from FourKites, so that they can implement agile planning and scenario management to mitigate any impact of those disruptions on their end-to-end supply chain. “o9 Solutions and FourKites are two best-of-breed solutions that are bringing a completely new value proposition to our joint customers. By bringing real-time freight tracking right into our Control Tower, our users will have access to maximum visibility, predictability and reactivity to any freight disruptions,” said Chakri Gottemukkala, CEO, o9 Solutions. “Real-time visibility and predictive ETAs are critical to end-to-end supply chain planning and orchestration,” said Mathew Elenjickal, founder and CEO, FourKites, in adding, “Our customers are seeing 10-15 per cent savings within their transportation, warehouse and customer service operations by leveraging the prescriptive recommendations from our platform. Our shipper network and data set, combined with o9’s end-to-end integrated planning capabilities, will enable our mutual customers to create exponential savings across their supply chains.”

Kuehne+Nagel open airside pharma and healthcare hubs in Brussels, Belgium and Johannesburg, South Africa. With the opening of airside facilities, the company has added two strategic elements to its global GxP-certified network of temperature-controlled facilities for the distribution of vaccines and other pharma & healthcare products. As many of the temperature-sensitive products have very low to no stability outside of their stated temperature ranges, direct tarmac access at Kuehne+Nagel airside facilities even further minimises the risk of temperature excursions and ensures product integrity during the logistics journey. The new premises have dedicated areas for all ranges of temperature-sensitive products:

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has partnered with Transnet Port Terminals (TPT) in South Africa, a state-owned freight transport and handling company, to develop an integrated online marketplace platform by bringing together cargo owners, shipping lines, clearing and forwarding agents, and road/rail haulers. Both the companies aim to create a platform named Cargo Connect, which will function as an online logistics marketplace where customers can submit logistics related requests and allow service providers to bid online. Customers will be able to select the preferred proposal and award the cargo contract to that bidder. Expected to be ready in 12 months, the Cargo Connect marketplace will reshape the industry and drive TPT’s growth. Sharla Chetty, Chief Information Officer, TPT, says, “A major feature of this solution is a logistics marketplace which will function in the same manner as existing market platforms in the transportation and hospitality industry. Customers could tender logistics requests on the platform and allow logistics service providers to bid and potentially be selected to undertake a logistics service.” Siyabulela Mhlaluka, General Manager, Sales and New Business Development, TPT, said, “The new solution will help us bring all logistics players under one platform, create transparency in the industry, as well us power the next leg of our growth journey.” “TCS has been partnering with progressive organizations across the world to develop new technology-enabled business models that power their growth and transformation journeys,” said Sumanta Roy, Head, TCS Middle East, Africa, and Mediterranean.

Explaining whether India is ready for driverless vehicles and drones, V Raju, Senior Vice President CL – Chemical, Pharma & Food Sector, Avvashya CCI Logistics at at CargoTalk’s fourth digital conclave, “At a moment it seems like a distant dream. But in 1970s or 80s we used to have human labour force working for the loading and unloading of cargo and every single activity was done only by the labour. And, if the labour was not in sufficient numbers the cargo operations used to come to a halt. Unloading a truck used to be dependent through metallic plates or metallic panels which used to rest against the trucks and the cargo used to be slit down those metallic panels. However, today things have gone to the scientific level. The entire planning in warehouse has been done by WMS; we never used to have them in the past. The forklifts, stackers are now battery operated ones; we never used to have even ordinary forklifts. This is how things have changed over a period of time.”

Amit Malakar, Chief Customer Officer, Welspun One talks about the lessons to be learnt from the pandemic at CargoTalk’s fourth digital conclave. He says, “COVID-19 has taught us few things, such as, how important it is to be digital in our business, consumer’s direct connection to brand and having multiple stock points rather than one to fulfil the demand quicker, to name a few. We have realised that industry players with robust supply chains and those who were well stocked and well replenished were the ones who survived. Calling logistics industry an important contributor to our economy, he continues, “There has been a lot of talk about warehouse consolidation over the last five years and now the government is also keen and trying to reduce some cost of supply chain. The warehousing industry has also got infrastructure status. Hence, things are moving in the positive direction in this industry.”

Sharing the challenging times given by COVID-19, Naveen Rawat, Director & Co-founder, Holisol Logistics, at CargoTalk’s fourth digital conclave says, “Things have started looking better especially on the e-commerce side. For many of our customers for whom e-commerce was just a secondary channel and their primary channel was selling from their stores have now realised that e-commerce is not a filler but a very important part of their business. In the last four to six weeks the business has gone up to 50 per cent from a single digit market share of e-commerce. Rawat is sure that this change is not only a temporary measure but even as and when things go back to normal, e-commerce would still be an important kind of channel for them. The growth percentage might not stay at 50 per cent but it will not go into single digit and will definitely not go back to pre-COVID level.

In order to enable customers with supply chain solutions on Google Cloud, o9 Solutions has announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud. The new partnership extends the reach of o9 to companies looking to transform their capabilities around demand sensing and forecasting, supply chain planning, assortment planning, integrated business planning and more with the global infrastructure and deployment options that Google Cloud enables. The wide-ranging partnership will specifically target leading retail, consumer product manufacturer and telecom companies with unique capabilities to scale with o9 and Google Cloud. “The COVID-19 crisis has exposed significant weaknesses in how organisations run their value chains today,” said Igor Rikalo, President & COO, o9 Solutions. Data remains critical for effective planning, and Google Cloud’s data sources and scalability are key to deal with this new level of complexity. In addition, o9’s Enterprise Knowledge Graph (ie Digital Brain) is able to convert data (structured and unstructured, external and internal) to actionable insights to drive improved decision making.

FarEye has raised an additional US$ 13 million as an extension to its Series D investment led by The Fundamentum Partnership and KB Global Platform Fund. The investment will accelerate company’s global expansion to address the steepening digital curve for logistics transformation. The need is being further accelerated by enterprises and end consumers demanding a high level of transparency, faster and more convenient delivery experiences. There is also an increased need for flexible supply chains to meet these demands. “We are seeing a surge in the need for real-time visibility in logistics for businesses to build customer-centric supply chains. With recently raised funds, we will continue to invest in the best talent in the Americas, Europe, and APAC to support our hyper-growth in these regions. With a vision to make FarEye one of the most customer-centric organizations globally, we aim to make every delivery delightful for the consumers.” said Kushal Nahata, CEO, FarEye.

CargoTalk is all geared up to host the fourth conclave on August 25, 2020 from 10 am to 12:15 pm. The virtual summit is divided into two one-hour sessions and will have eminent speakers from Ministry and trade. The summit will discuss the significance of going contactless in logistics industry and how warehousing industry is withstanding the e-commerce boom, especially in this hour of need. Speakers will include Pawan Kumar Agarwal, IAS, Special Secretary (Logistics), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India, Cyrus Katgara, President, Air Cargo Forum India, V Raju, Senior Vice President – CL – Chemical, Pharma & Food Sector, Avvashya CCI Logistcs (All Cargo Group), Satish Lakkaraju, Chief Commercial Officer, Agility Logistics and John Thomas, Group Director, Realistic Realtors & Reach Promoters and Director at CIRIL (Commercial Real Estate Advisors)

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal says digital is the way forward. Inaugurating the PHD Virtual Retail Supply Chain Expo, the minister emphasises on how COVID has altered consumers’ purchasing pattern. He says, “More and more people are moving online for purchases. Hence, retail trade will also have to shift to new strategies to align them in the evolving consumers’ preferences. Retail will also evolve by engaging with both the physical and digital world. Smart logistics and better distribution capabilities will built up and supply chain will also progress using modern tools and modern technologies. “Transparency has become very important element in businesses. To build business, both at the production & manufacturing level and distribution & supply chain, we have to look at artificial intelligence, chatbot, augmented reality, virtual reality, IoT, blockchain technology,” he adds.