Category Archives: Technology

CHAMP Cargosystems, the leading air cargo systems provider, announces its partnership with CargoAi. By connecting their systems through APIs, both partners are giving their users new connections and capabilities for the future. CHAMP offers increased visibility to CargoAi for its more than 100 airlines and GSAs customers. In return, CargoAi offers CHAMP clients a new sales channel and CargoAi increases its capacity to make quotes, prices and bookings instantly available to freight forwarders. ‘Our clients and users are at the heart of this partnership. Creating value for them has always been our priority and that is why we have the widest range of suites of systems dedicated to air freight. Being available on CargoAi, if they wish, is therefore an additional service that we can offer our clients’, says Nicholas Xenocostas, VP Commercial & Customer Engagement, CHAMP Cargosystems. As he sees it, now is the time to ‘deliver innovation faster’ to support and transform customers’ business processes, while bringing more digitalisation and visibility to the air freight industry. Connecting via APIs, CHAMP and CargoAi in effect enable supply chain partners to be integrated: airlines, freight forwarders and GSAs can thus connect and exchange information very easily. ‘Our goal remains the same; to make digitisation accessible to all industry players. This partnership with CHAMP is a real boon for our customers. Because thanks to the joint work we have accomplished, our customers can grow their businesses by being connected to each other, without having to do anything,’ says CargoAi CEO Matthieu Petot. ‘CHAMP and its teams are the gold standard in our industry and working with these cargo system experts is a fantastic opportunity.’

With a vision to improve intra-warehousing logistics and supply chain, Godrej Material Handling has announced the launch of MOPTro™, a product of Greendzine Technologies – a motorized order-picking trolley. This is a natural extension to Godrej’s existing product – SKUtro, a manual order-picking system, which was launched last year, to aid in improving shop floor mobility and employee productivity. The pandemic brought about many changes in the functioning of businesses with many city-working people moving back to their hometowns. This reverse migration pivoted e-commerce sales from tier-1 cities to tier-2 cities. Launched in 2019, SKUtro has been seeing a rise in demand from e-commerce, retail and pharmaceutical companies especially over the past few months. Factors such as the past few months of lockdown, the subsequent pent up demand and seasonal festive sales are pushing companies like Godrej to partner on solutions that ensure speedy and accurate order-picking thereby achieving higher throughput. This also ensures that the warehouse employees reap benefits such as better health, safety, and wellness. MOPTro™ revolutionises the everyday manual order-picking practices by simplifying the tedious manual picking process for operators, ensuring accurate picking and put-away. The software on the mobile device attached to MOPTro™ helps in showing the fastest aisle route to picking a product thus enabling greater throughput. According to statistics released in the public domain by research organizations on the recent sales by Amazon and Flipkart, 91% of Amazon’s and 65% of Flipkart’s new customers came from smaller cities. Therefore, in order to fulfil such high demand, timely picking solutions are of high importance. India is a relatively young nation with a large slice of the population being sub 35 years in age. They like to try new experiences …

Hellmann Worldwide Logistics has announced the launch of SamrtAir! for the real-time tracking of air cargo shipment. Together with the Bonn-based start-up BlueBox Systems, Hellmann developed a web-based platform, which aims to provide customers with information about their air freight shipments, regardless of airline, route or type of shipment. Based on GPS coordinates, SmartAir! will be providing information on all stopovers and loading times for live tracking of shipments. The system offers numerous analysis options for the performance of individual airlines, routes and airports, aiming towards the optimisation of supply chain management. The company also offers tracking for sea freight and the generally applicable smart visibility tracker. These can record, in addition to tracking data, information on humidity, temperature, incidence of light, vibration and door opening, thus enabling detailed transport control of shipments. “SmartAir! is a real game-changer in the tracking of airfreight shipments, which has not been available in the market in this way before. In times of digitalisation and ever smaller time windows for decisions, quickly available real-time data within global supply chains are becoming increasingly important. This will also be of particular relevance in the upcoming distribution of COVID-19 vaccines,” says Henning Pottharst, Product Manager – Smart Visibility, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics.

IBS Software has partnered with CargoAi, to extend their presence in new and existing markets by leveraging on digital sales and distribution services. IBS Software is offering its iCargo customers the opportunity to increase their reach to the market and thereby scale their cargo revenues through a new partnership with CargoAi. IBS Software has been working with CargoAi since July 2020 to build a rich integration between iCargo and CargoAi using a scalable, API-based architecture. “Through this partnership, CargoAi and IBS Software have invested in creating platform-level integration to give our customers more choices on channels to digitally connect with their clients, faster time-to-market for such capabilities, and to do so with very little effort,” said Ashok Rajan, SVP & Head of Cargo & Logistics, IBS Software. “We believe that innovation can be fast-tracked by partnering with companies like CargoAi bringing in new and improved ways of doing business like in sales and distribution, which is still very antiquated and legacy-based in the air cargo industry,” he adds. Keen to offer a ‘digital ecosystem’ to its customers, IBS Software is making its motto of ‘Partnering for Innovation” a reality. With this API-based integration between platforms, airlines only have to turn on the switch for e-bookings from all over the world to reach their system. The process could not be easier for airlines – only a few days of tests are required between the platforms to get on board with CargoAi and no expensive bespoke IT development or complex system integration projects is required to deliver this capability. All the work has been done ahead of time by the two partners. “The integration currently covers real-time e-booking and e-quoting, flight availability …

TIFFA EDI Services and Kale Logistics Solutions have joined hands to promote paperless trade in the maritime sector of Thailand through their integrated and comprehensive Port Community System (PCS). The integrated platform empowers the SME players in the value chain to automate their internal business processes in an end-to-end manner. Kerry Siam Seaport, SITC Container Lines and Kline Logistics, have signed up this platform for e-DO services and many more are in the process of signing up. Talking about the development, Vineet Malhotra, Director, Kale Logistics Solutions, says, “Our relationship with Thailand and TIFFA is more than 7 years. We have empowered the air cargo sector with digitisation of air waybills and now we look at digitising the maritime sector. Our domain expertise and experience of working in 27 countries and executing global IT projects in maritime and air cargo space will add value to our PCS platform in Thailand. He further adds, “We are hopeful that this digital platform will play a key role in improving Thailand’s Logistics Performance Index (LPI) ranking with World Bank and Trade Facilitation Agreement initiatives with World Trade Organization (WTO)”. Expressing their delight over the development, Suwit Ratanachinda, Chairman, TIFFA EDI Services says, “We are offering this solution to ease all stakeholders with this challenging situation of risk from the COVID-19. The old-style Delivery Orders (DO) process which takes time and paper-intensive operations are prone to errors and increased the spread of virus through document exchange. The initiative of e-DO service is to facilitate ease of doing business to freight forwarders, shipping lines, transporters, terminal operators and Port authorities. This solution offers an open integrated platform connecting all cargo stakeholders on single platform for …

Shipsy has raised US$ 6 million in Series A funding in a round led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, a rapid scale-up program for start-ups in India and Southeast Asia, and existing investor, the publicly-listed Indian online classifieds company Info Edge. “The platform helps shippers reduce freight costs by automating and digitizing freight negotiations, reducing incidental charges, significantly improving shipping turnaround time and minimising working capital loss for shippers through advanced machine learning models,” explains Soham Chokshi, Co-founder and CEO of Shipsy. “Owing to a substantial increase in the demand for our solution, it was important to leverage the momentum and look out for global investment partners in our next leg of our journey. The money raised will help fuel our growth and enable us to become a market leader, allowing us to continue our aggressive geographical expansion, besides investing in product innovation to keep us ahead of the curve. While we have run our venture profitably, it was critical for us to partner with like-minded global investors in our journey as we venture into larger markets”, he adds. The approach is to create a strong SaaS workflow management platform that allows network participants to collaborate and work together, reducing process bottlenecks, enhancing efficiency and bringing transparency. Shipsy boasts of processing 10% of India’s trade as well as having the biggest 3PL company, the largest exporter and retailer along with the largest QSR chain amongst their clientele. More than 120 enterprises, including 5 of the top 10 exporters of India are among Shipsy’s clients today. Strong word-of-mouth and referrals from the top names have aided the multifold growth over the last 1 year. As for the business, revenues have grown …

In collaboration with tech innovator Verity, DSV is implementing an autonomous drone system in several of its warehouses to help manage inventory. The drone system can scan barcodes without human interaction and detect if pallet positions are empty or occupied. Operating mainly at night, the drones don’t interrupt warehouse operations. Inventory management traditionally involves manual barcode scans to count the warehouse inventory and keep track of stock. Besides being an unsafe and arduous task, manual counts often result in inventory data not being up to date due to discrepancies. The DSV Innovation Hub continually works to innovate DSV’s customer offerings and its operations, and after connecting with Verity, the two companies tested the system at the Moerdijk warehouse in the Netherlands, completing thousands of autonomous flights and tens of thousands of scans. “The drones know down to each centimetre where goods are located, and the information they provide with their scans can be compared with information in our system. This helps us to increase the predictability and visibility of inventory,” says Luca Graf, Senior Director, Innovation, DSV. The pilot showed that manual counts can be avoided to a large extent and that inventory data becomes virtually error-free, thereby helping to reduce stock. The successful pilot now leads to roll-out of the drone system into more DSV warehouses. “We want to offer our customers high-tech supply chain solutions, which is why we work with innovative companies like Verity. We have had a good, hands-on collaboration with them on this drone system, which we expect can benefit many of our warehouse operations where the business case makes sense,” says Peter van der Maas, Executive Vice President, Benelux, DSV Solutions.

American Airlines Cargo has continued the modernisation of its business with the completion of digital Air Mail Handling and Mail Revenue Accounting modules from IBS Software’s iCargo system. This deployment, which was completed in late August, was the final transition necessary to complete the multi-year modernisation effort that replaces the cargo business’s technology platform. iCargo has helped American simplify its cargo business’s IT landscape by reducing the number of systems from 90 to 10, eliminating redundancies and inefficiencies in systems and processes that will drive improvements for its 8000+ cargo team and 30,000 customers. The enhanced technology enabled teams to better communicate with customers and offer new solutions in a time where keeping cargo moving was especially critical. “Completing the transition to iCargo is a critical step in digitalising our global air cargo business. Air cargo has played a vital role during the pandemic, and it is important that we continue to innovate and press ahead with our digital strategy as we look toward the future,” said, Angela Hudson, Head of Transformation for American Airlines Cargo. She added, “Our entire team owned this transition and have been working side-by-side to leverage our new tools with customers in mind.” “The successful go-live of the iCargo platform at American Airlines Cargo is a testament to the commitment that iCargo and IBS Software brings to the global air cargo business. American has an incredible team running an intensive air cargo schedule, especially now with their cargo-only flight schedule, and we’re delighted that iCargo will be playing a critical role in helping them achieve that,” said Ashok Rajan, Senior Vice President & Head of Cargo and Logistics, IBS Software.

Terminal Pipavav has commenced Integrated Container Tracking (ICT) system introduced by National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation Ltd (NICDC) under Logistics Data Bank (LDB) project. NICDC Logistics Data Services (NLDS) has completed vital infrastructure at APM Terminals Pipavav to commence the near real time visibility of the container movement across the supply chain. This will help in tracking the container from port to Container Freight Stations (CFSs), Inland Container Depots (ICDs) and end users and would help in enhancing the visibility and efficiency of the container movement thereby improving the competitiveness of the Exim trade. LDB was developed to address the critical issue of tracking movement of containers across various ports and provide insights to trade. It integrates the information available with various agencies across the supply chain to provide detailed real time information within a single window. With this expansion 100% of India’s container volume will be covered under LDB project. Currently around 28 million EXIM containers pan India have received services. Jakob Friis Sørensen, Managing Director, APM Terminals Pipavav said, “It’s an honour to become a part of this nation-wide project of NICDC that will streamline container movement across logistics value chain and identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks to develop strategies to ensure the development of the sector.” He adds, “The visibility of containers throughout the entire supply chain provides multiple benefits to trade, including transparency, integration, lesser paperwork and improved planning for arrival, unloading and final delivery.” A separate Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) has been formed by the Govt. of India between NICDC and NEC Corporation, Japan namely “NICDC Logistics Data Services Limited” (NLDSL) to execute LDB across entire logistics value chain. LDB is now functional at 17 ports, …

In a bid to offer services on P-CaSo, Portall Infosystems has announced collaboration with BoxnBiz, an inbuilt cloud-based Indian freight forwarding solution-based offering air freight, ocean freight & customs clearance. P-CaSo, a collaborative platform for the ecosystem is integrated into the Indian Port Community System to bring various services, including services such as eBL, blockchain document transfer (BDT), trucking aggregation services, eVGM and e-learning, certificate of origin. The addition of freight quote to the existing pallet of services will allow PCS 1x users to access the ocean freight portal’s booking, get instant freight quotes for FCL & LCL services along with end to end tracking & visibility with 3000+ port pairs to serve import & export needs, saving and sharing documents and payments. Shirishchandra Shah, Chief Product Officer, Portall Infosystems, said, “Our partnership with BoxnBiz would bring synergy & value additions in the maritime community as we once again make our footprint in the digitisation space. I thank Indian Ports Association for their wholehearted support & wish BoxnBiz a very best of luck in their journey with us.” Biplob Barik, Founder & CEO, BoxnBiz said, “With this partnership, we expect that the adoption of digitalisation in the international shipping space will increase and the maritime sector will take a greater step towards digitalization. The present pandemic has no doubt shaken the way businesses work. Now it is time to change and we want to contribute to this journey together with Portall.”