Category Archives: Technology

Recently, Jeena Criticare, the critical healthcare division of Jeena & Co., India’s trusted and reliable logistics company, recently announced having completed a milestone of 100 tonnes of COVID-19 vaccine deliveries across the country in the last year.  Throughout 2021—the year when the nation was on a fast track to completing COVID vaccination after a devastating 2nd wave—Jeena Criticare was at the forefront of these efforts. Be it as an appointed distributor of Serum Institute of India’s (SII’s) COVISHEILD vaccine deliveries for private hospital supplies across the country or as a part of the strategic collaboration for Asia’s first drone-based vaccine delivery project for the Telangana government, Jeena Criticare has played a pivotal role.  Apart from the above milestone, during the peak pandemic time till the end of 2021, Jeena Criticare has been instrumental in clearing and moving 3,000 MT of COVID care equipment that includes oxygen concentrators, RT PCR kits, PPE kits, hospital beds, medicines, and critical care drugs, masks, vaccines, and ventilators. Jeena’s Pharma Division has also been instrumental in getting fast-track import clearance, from the normal 24 hours to a special 5 hours flat, for COVID Care Aid and other healthcare transportation from countries like South Korea, Germany, USA, Taiwan, China, Italy, and also the WHO. With their global logistics support, Jeena has also been a part of India’s export chain, enabling healthcare to various countries and also for customers like the WHO (World Health Organisation). Jeena & Co., an over-100-year-old logistics company, has always been at the forefront of innovation in end-to-end logistics solutions and continues to be a trusted and reliable supply chain partner.  Speaking about the milestone achievement and the strong thrust on critical healthcare …

Wiz, a tech-enabled full-stack freight forwarding platform for the modern-day, has announced the start of a new business entity exclusively for handling bulk cargo. The business division, headquartered in Singapore, will cater to the niche market of dry bulk shipping. Wiz has also announced that Punit Oza has been appointed as the CEO of Wiz Bulk. He will start his new assignment on April 11, 2022. Punit is a veteran of dry bulk shipping and comes with over 29 years of rich experience in the industry. Over the years, he has held senior management positions in some leading shipping and trading companies. In his previous assignment, he spearheaded the digital transformation of Klaveness Dry Bulk before moving to the board of Klaveness Asia. We are extremely excited to announce Wiz Bulk, a new business entity of Wiz that will cater to the dry bulk cargo market, and we will utilise our tech expertise to improve the customer experience for this market,” said Ramkumar Govindarajan, CEO, Wiz. It was immediately clear that Punit was the right choice to lead Wiz Bulk. I am looking forward to working with him to develop Wiz Bulk as a leading name for dry bulk cargo movements.” Punit Oza said, “I am extremely excited to join the Wiz family and look forward to building a sustainable and customer-centric bulk shipping solution to provide greater transparency and value, leveraging technology to the maximum possible extent.” I am extremely impressed with what Wiz has achieved in the container freight solution space, and I hope that we can achieve the same success in the bulk freight solution space as well. Punit will work with Wiz founders Ramkumar Govindarajan and …

Logistics platform FreightFox recently announced a partnership with Yale researchers to develop a responsive index-based pricing model that facilitates dynamic transportation decisions. The new freight contract and pricing model will take into account the most important factors that influence truck placement, such as seasonality in industry and agriculture, significant skewness in month and dispatches, and limited trucking inventory. The contract model will be designed to ensure best placement of trucking fleets at different times to minimise movement disruptions and maximise truck dispatch fulfilments. This will not only keep operations flowing but also support better visibility, allowing manufacturers to plan shipments better and have contingency options in case of failures elsewhere along the supply chain. At the same time, both manufacturers and transport partners can be assured of fair pricing. With reference to the partnership, Dr Ryan, Assistant Professor of Economics, Yale University and an affiliate of the Economic Growth Centre said: “Failures in shipping and trade are a major concern for firms in India, and offering improved contracts could make shipping more reliable, lower-cost, and raise people’s incomes. The intention of the project is to innovate in new contracts and see if that reduces the costs of trade.” “We are delighted to collaborate with researchers at Yale to develop such innovative freight contracts and are committed to deliver superior logistic contracting methods by leveraging technology, data and the know-how available at Yale,” said Nitish Rai, CEO and Co-founder of FreightFox. A memorandum of understanding guiding the research was signed in January 2022. Given the fragmented nature of the Indian economy, manufacturers often encounter logistical issues when it comes to procurement and freight contracts. Most freight contracts are static one-year affairs …

American Airlines Cargo is embracing Digital Cargo, providing over 10,000 global forwarders with access to live rates, capacity, and instant eBookings through partnership with WebCargo, a Freightos group company. With widespread supply chain disruptions and clogged ports creating chaos for shippers, more customers are looking to air cargo for fast and reliable global shipping. This partnership will help support the air cargo industry by offering customers increased service options and reliability despite these challenging conditions. Bookings on American Airlines Cargo, one of the top carriers in North America, will be available via WebCargo’s platform across parts of Europe and North America in the first half of 2022 before expanding to other parts of the globe later in the year. With the pricing and capacity transparency offered by WebCargo, American can offer immediate booking options to even more customers and better support industry demand through the platform’s accessible, real-time data offering. “Over the last two years, e-commerce volume has surged and demand for global freight has increased. American Airlines Cargo has continued to adapt and innovate in order to deliver excellent customer service, and the digital solutions provided by WebCargo create another important step forward in ensuring continued connectivity and visibility for customers,” said Jessica Tyler, President of American Airlines Cargo.

A.P. Moller – Maersk’s strategy is to offer integrated solutions for smooth and optimised cargo flows that can span across all steps of the supply chain and create value for customers in the form of better supply chain outcomes, increased transparency and control, and ultimately lower endto-end costs. This vision is being delivered by combining the broad product and service offering of ‘Logistics & Services’ with the highly reliable and more differentiated ‘Ocean’ transportation offering. In addition, significant financial and operational synergies are being realised between Terminals and Ocean via close collaboration to drive efficiency. One of the important elements binding all these aspects together is ‘Technology’. Vikash Agarwal, Managing Director, Maersk South Asia, said, “Technology enablement is critically important for all value creation elements. It enables the creation of new products and services, facilitates a seamless, state-of-the-art, end-to-end customer experience, enables standardisation and automation of processes, and powers the next levels of operational excellence and efficiency.” A key enabler of Maersk’s strategy is the digital transformation, where massive acceleration in activities was witnessed in the last two years. The turnover on the Maersk.com platform, which includes Maersk.com, Twill.net, Maersk Mobile App and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), reached USD 38bn in 2021, an almost 90% jump from 2019. The traffic on Maersk.com increased by 15%, and the search for Maersk’s Ocean products increased by 52% in 2021. The number of bookings processed on the mobile app increased more than 15-fold, indicating a massive shift in how customers prefer to engage, especially in the times that drove social distancing and remote working. Instant booking confirmation was offered on 70% of the transactions on Maersk.com, an industry first that contributes towards frictionless …

B2B logistics tech platform Oorjaa has raised around Rs 9 Crores in a Pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures. The round also saw participation from a clutch of HNIs who have invested in personal capacity and through Vinners angel investing platform. The funds will be used to focus on the product and tech development, expanding into new geographies and on working capital requirements. Oorjaa was founded by Sandeep Patil, Prashant Mohite and Yogesh Parab, each with uniquely diverse and complimentary skill sets in late 2019. Oorjaa offers highly effective technology driven logistics solutions aided with transformative technology solutions on auto-routing, network optimization, data analytics, trip management and highly efficient operating processes run by the most skilled and trained manpower. Their biggest strength is having proprietary tools for optimizing logistics operations, diversely skilled founders with decades of experience in building products and businesses. They have bootstrapped to an impressive two-digit ARR with founders’ capital and investment of just Rs. 40 Lakhs. Since its launch in November 2019, Oorjaa has expanded to 15+ cities, 30+ Hub locations, conducting 4000+ orders per day with 200+ Vehicles (inclusive of EV Cargo Vehicles, promoting sustainability). Their B2B clientele include some of the most well-known large e-commerce, food-tech & e-groceries companies.

o9 Solutions has announced Generation Investment Management co-founder and chairman, and former U.S. Vice President, Al Gore, as a keynote speaker for aim10x global 2022. Held virtually from April 5-7, aim10x global 2022 will be o9 Solutions’ largest digital transformation event to date. Top leaders across planning, decision-making, and analytics will share their insights on leveraging the power of data and AI to help companies make better, faster decisions across industries. On April 5, Gore will present “The Case for Optimism on the Climate Crisis” and discuss the Sustainability Revolution that is beginning to reshape the world. This revolution—when coupled with technological advances—will have a deeper global impact than the industrial revolution and will unfold faster than the digital revolution. “We are extremely pleased to welcome the co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management and former U.S. Vice President, Al Gore, as a keynote speaker at aim10x global 2022,” said Chakri Gottemukkala, CEO and co-founder of o9 Solutions. “He has dedicated his career to raising awareness and inspiring action against climate change. Social impact and sustainability are core values and an important part of o9. We are eager to help large companies make better decisions for their companies and our planet and are looking forward to hearing Al Gore speak more on that topic at aim10x global 2022”. aim10x global takes place virtually from April 5 to April 7.

Pickrr has announced the launch of another value-added service, Pickrr Predict. The flagship product feature will provide predictive analysis to sellers as soon as an order is placed on Pickrr, which helps mitigate the significant risk proportion attached to cash-on-delivery orders. According to an industry estimate, there is only a 75% probability of the order getting delivered. There can be multiple factors behind COD orders not getting received, such as fraudulent orders, incorrect addresses, unavailability of cash, late deliveries, restricted zones, etc. This results in the sellers’ considerable monetary loss because of the failed delivery and the inventory’s RTO process. In a bid to neutralize the additional losses of the sellers, Pickrr Predict has been integrated with Pickrr’s all-in-one dashboard. The feature uses collective data and evaluates the order over 30 parameters, including past online transactions of the customer, return history, high-stress delivery zones, etc., to calculate the risk percentage and intimate the high-risk orders before proceeding with order dispatch. With the help of this intelligent analysis, sellers can determine further processes to cancel, confirm, or edit details for any order. Speaking on introducing the new VAS feature, Gaurav Mangla, CEO and Co-Founder, Pickrr, said, “Failed Cash-on-Delivery has become a significant challenge for businesses. As an industry leader, we strive to provide solutions for the problems that can make a larger difference within the logistic ecosystem. Pickrr Predict is already resolving the shipping woes for over 5000 sellers currently using this disruptive service. He also added, “We are confident that this marquee product feature will help countless sellers generate valuable savings and steer clear of losses.” Pickrr has constantly delivered a seamless logistics experience to D2C and eCommerce sellers through …

After two years of disruption, the logistics sector is riding on a growth wave as COVID-19 wanes, with the giant logistics provider DTDC leading this wave with a special focus on healthcare. The national player is taking the logistics game a notch higher and upgrading their infrastructure, launching several warehouses for positive growth and expansion. After the pandemic struck and several lockdowns, the demand for doorstep delivery of medicine and vaccines has soared. In order to meet this demand and facilitate people with speedy services that meet their life-saving medical requirements, DTDC is now on a mission to reach every large city and the remotest of villages in the country. Rolling this mission into action, DTDC has begun with the Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh. They have opened a new warehouse with state-of-the-art facilities and high-end technology-enabled. Partnering with e-commerce giants, the logistics provider is all set to provide enhanced deliveries across categories across the urban and rural segments of the state. “To further enhance our services and streamline operations to serve our customers better, we are building major logistic hubs across the country to facilitate business growth and deliver value to customers across the length and breadth of the country,” says Subhasish Chakraborty, Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of DTDC. “We are happy with the way the people of the country have supported us in the last 32 years. We started from Karnataka but are all over India today. With the trio element of service, support, and advanced infrastructure, we are sure to take care of everyone’s needs in the coming future. Moreover, we also run a foundation called SSCF (Shri Subhasish Chakraborty Foundation), where orphanages and the aged …

Amerijet International Airlines has announced the launch of its new cargo management system, SmartKargo. The new online system enables the airline’s customers greater flexibility to view prices, capacity and make real-time bookings. Digital transformation and automation have been in the forefront of Amerijet’s vision to provide its customers with digital innovation every step of the way. “The new cargo system will bring efficiencies to Amerijet and its customers, and with SmartKargo we will provide not only a streamlined user experience for our forwarders and direct cargo customers but also reliable access to our capacity, and real time data at every step of the distribution journey,” said Tim Strauss, Amerijet’s Chief Executive Officer. Using the new online system, Amerijet’s customers can access capacity throughout Amerijet’s global freight network anytime, anywhere. Customers will use the new platform by accessing their existing Amerijet MyCargo suite at www.amerijet.com. “SmartKargo is a part of a comprehensive investment strategy in new technology and processes that will benefit both our employees and customers every day. We are very pleased with our SmartKargo experience, and we hope our customers will be too,” added Eric Wilson, Chief Commercial Officer. “We will be investing in our customer experience moving forward as we continue to grow,” Wilson said.