Category Archives: Supply Chain

Holisol Logistics has launched ‘Verdis Visibility’ to provide complete end-to-end visibility of supply chain processes in terms of the key parameters relevant to the organisation. Verdis Visibility is a part of company’s AI and ML-driven supply chain solutions system. The integrated flow of material and information is captured and easily available in the ‘dashboards’ of Verdis Visibility, in real-time, automated and online manner, enabling monitoring, analysis and quick decision making in the complex supply chains of today. “Verdis takes a deep dive into the organisation’s wide data (structured & unstructured) to connect the variables and identify a pattern to build the opportunity intelligence to realise its full potential,” says Rahul S Dogar, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Holisol Logistics.

Serving the air cargo logistics industry, its members from the entire segments of air cargo logistics industry and the nation, Air Cargo Forum India (ACFI) has completed its eight constructive and successful years. With the objective of developing the air cargo logistics and supply chain industry and for bringing improvements in the movement and processing of EXIM trade with the help of the government regulatory agencies, ACFI was formed in the year 2012. After completion of two successful years (2018-19 to 2019-20) term of previous ACFI Governing Board, ACFI in its 8th Annual General Meeting (AGM) followed by its 63rd Board meeting held on July 17, 2020 has announced the new ACFI Governing Board members for the next two years i.e. 2020-21 to 2021-22 taken over charge under the leadership of Cyrus Katgara, Partner M/S Jeena & Co. as President of ACFI. Air Cargo Forum India (ACFI) is the only nationwide association having representation from the entire air cargo logistic supply chain industry i.e. Airport Operators (Government & Private), Freight Forwarders, Airlines, Customs Brokers, Cargo Terminal Operators, Bonded Truck Operators, General Sales Agencies, Express Industry and the Associations of these individual stakeholders. In the international collaboration ACFI is the member of The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA) and an Association Member of PHD Chamber of Commerce & Industry in India.

Calling digitalising the complete supply chain a need of the hour, Nihar Parida, Industry Expert & Supply Chain Consultant, says, “Data at every point should be captured as much as possible. Also, data analysis should happen at a single point and not in silos.” He continues, “During the change in tax from local sales tax to VAT, most organisations opened warehouses in every state. The moment GST was declared; the finance and logistics fraternity started exploring how they could consolidate their stocks in few warehouses as the state borders became obsolete from the tax point of view. For the first time, the logistics people started thinking of inventory from a logistics cost saving perspective rather than a tax saving perspective. But again most were guided by the common thought of consolidation. The LSPs also started selling the idea to ensure they could save cost in their multi-user facilities. The distribution factor was side-lined. The transporters and the courier companies were in the limelight.”

“In order to streamline the logistics eco-system in the country, a National Logistics Efficiency and Advancement Predictability & Safety Act (NLEAPS) is under consideration,” informs, Pawan Agarwal, Special Secretary (Logistics), Ministry of Commerce & Industry at a webinar organized by the PHD Chambers of Commerce. Stressing on defining the various elements in the logistics sector, he says, “What the logistics sector is all about is not very clear to us as of now. The government is considering replacing the multimodal transportation of goods law with national logistics law to promote growth of the sector.” “The high logistics cost of country is impacting the competitiveness of domestic goods in the international market. India’s logistics sector is highly fragmented and the government aims to reduce the logistics cost from the present 14 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product to less than 10 per cent,” tells Agarwal. He continues, “During the times of COVID-19, there has been a disruption in the supply chain and movement of truck with many of the supplies diverting to the rail; making it a reliable and cost effective mode of transportation. In these indispensable times, we have realised the importance of essential services with their regular supply chains,” he adds. According to Agarwal, digitisation of logistics is the need of the hour which will increase the efficiency in movement of goods. He also informs that the government is working on creating digital platforms and mobiles apps for logistics such as warehouse information tracking and trading yard (WITTY), among others to mapping of warehouses. Agarwal believes that logistics is a sector that needs to realise the vision of ‘Aatma Nirbhar Bharat’.

Facilitating omnichannel e-commerce, Holisol has scaled up the fulfillment capabilities by adding self-serving ‘Automated Sales Centre (ASC)’, a tech-based solution that enables 24×7 touch-less buying of product. Along with this, the company has created a strong and tech-enabled network of pick-up centres, customer experience centres, rapid fulfilment centres, return/refurbishment centres, dark Stores, exchange stores, omni-channel fulfilment centres and collection centres enabling seamless omnichannel shopping experience for the end customer. “Our focus is, how to increase the accessibility of the consumption market for the customers, especially during the crisis. By enabling distributed inventory model and placing them closer to the consumption market, we aim to make our customers’ supply chain responsive and enable faster fulfilment”, states Rahul S Dogar, Managing Director, Holisol. “The biggest value addition has been to let our customer focus on sourcing and selling, leaving all else in between to us. With our tech-enabled omnichannel network we will speed up the fulfilment including instant, same day or next day fulfilment to increase the sales throughput of our customers,” he adds.

FarEye has announced partnership with Blue Yonder to drive seamless interoperability between legacy infrastructure and modern supply chain and logistics tools. The joint capabilities of both organisations will bring predictive and real-time visibility to supply chains across manufacturing, retail distribution, logistics, and ecommerce. The joint solution can be accessed through Blue Yonder’s LuminateTM Platform. The Luminate Platform combines rich internal and external data from across a customer’s digital supply chain assets to allow for smarter, more actionable Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) based business decisions. “Globally, approximately 30 per cent of spend on logistics to tackle inefficiencies is creating an opportunity to save US$ 1000 billion. Together, FarEye and Blue Yonder aim to capture this market with their joint offering, which will provide an exceptional customer experience in the last mile,” says Kushal Nahata, CEO, FarEye.

M. Ajit Kumar, Chairman, CBIC has launched the e-Office application in over 500 CGST and Customs offices across India. The e-Office application was launched remotely in the presence of over 800 senior officers of CBIC. Dr Neeta Verma, DG, National Informatics Centre, (NIC) was also present. Over 50,000 officers and staff will use this application making CBIC one of the largest Government departments to automate its internal office procedures. The CBIC expects e-Office would complement its other IT led reforms which are directly aimed at enhancing the ease of doing business for the trade and industry. The launch of e-Office is one more measure taken by the CBIC in leveraging technology for providing a ‘Faceless, Contactless and Paperless’ indirect Tax administration.

To modernise farm logistics and supply value chains in line, the agriculture ministry has created a cell. The decision has taken after the recent announcements of reforms in the sector by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The reforms cell will help coordinate efforts to streamline supply and transportation of farm produce, and also aid projects to add value to primary farm goods for better prices to the farmers This includes making amendments to the six-decade-old ‘Essential Commodities Act’ and pushing two ordinances which will free up farm trade from all restrictions and guarantee a legal framework for pre-agreed prices to farmers. The government hopes that scaling back the ECA, 1955, will help drive up investment in cold storages and the food supply chain. Cold storages are refrigerated warehouses that can store perishables for up to six months. Refrigerated old stocks can cool food prices in times of scarcity.

Federation of Freight Forwarders Association in India (FFFAI) has recently organised a webinar with M. Ajit Kumar, Chairman, CBIC to discuss the initiatives required for maintaining critical supply chain in India during the Covid-19 pandemic. Sharing the struggles faced by customs brokers community during the Covid-19 times, A.V. Vijaykumar, Chairman, FFFAI, says, “The customs officials and customs brokers both were in the frontline to make sure that wheels of economy did not stop due to the stagnation of import and export handling during lockdown.” Acknowledging the effort taken by customs brokers in this crisis, Kumar says “It requires lot of courage to work in these times; even in the initial days when there was no permission to move, customs house agents took the pain to help us in the crucial function of clearing essential goods supply which was required by the country that time.” Talking about the future plans, Kumar commits, “By the end of December 2020 we will ensure the faceless assessment of cargo pan India. We will try to see that there will be no physical contact required between any importer, exporter, custom house or custom broker.”

Maersk has started end-to-end cold chain logistics solution for exporters shipping grapes from Nashik and Sangli to North Europe. With this service, Maersk offers end-to-end cold chain logistics solution for grapes’ exporters from Nashik and Sangli thus improving the overall turnaround time into North Europe by four days. Steve Felder, Managing Director – South Asia, Maersk, said “Nashik is a priority market for the exports of grapes from India. With our end-to-end cold chain solutions, we aim to enable the exporters to take their grapes from Nashik to North Europe with a fast turn-around time, and with more simplicity.”