Category Archives: Warehousing

DHLink, the smart logistics arm of DHGATE Group, officially announced its cooperation with SHOPLINE Logistics, an independent logistics expert of JOYY Group. By fully leveraging the advantages of direct mail channels, warehousing, and freight transportation on both sides, the collaboration will simplify the logistics process, eliminate connection problems, and enhance transport efficiency. The shortcomings of e-commerce, specifically logistical problems, will become a part of the past for cross-border merchants, enabling millions of consumers worldwide to enjoy fast and reliable delivery. “The rapid development of the cross-border e-commerce industry has motivated merchants to place more emphasis on the global market. As we move towards globalization, these opportunities coexist with risks. Coming up with a practical and effective last-mile solution is a crucial part of optimizing business efficiency, providing value-added services, and improving the overall consumer experience. Allowing consumers to experience a high-quality and seamless one-step logistics service is also an essential part of branding, especially for ambitious merchants. The emergence of new models, such as the DTC e-commerce website, now provides cross-border merchants with more options,” said an official release.

To strengthen last-mile logistics, Blue Dart has plans to set up 25 retail outlets in Tier-I and Tier-II towns as part of its expansion roadmap. Besides these 25 retails outlets, the company plans to establish 100 similar facilities. These stores have opened in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, West Bengal, Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa, and Gujarat, Blue Dart said in a statement. The company said it now serves over 55,400 locations. “Blue Dart’s store expansion will increase accessibility for our customers and expand our network. To strengthen last-mile logistics to the farthest reaches of the country, we will continue to locate in new areas and broaden our reach,” said Ketan Kulkarni, Chief Commercial Officer at Blue Dart.

Amazon has debuted a warehouse robot that can pick up and sort millions of individual unpackaged products, in a move that will automate more jobs as the US ecommerce giant faces pressure to significantly cut logistics costs. The group said the robot, named Sparrow, is its first one with the capability to “detect, select, and handle individual products in our inventory”, a task that had previously been the exclusive domain of Amazon’s warehouse employees. Sparrow, a robotic arm that harnesses computer vision technology to identify and pick up small products, was unveiled at an event recently. The ecommerce group said the robot would “benefit” its employees, who could now focus on less repetitive tasks in the company’s warehouses. It said 700 new “categories” of jobs had been created at the company related to robotics.

Ganesh Complex is driving this growth in Eastern India, by providing warehousing solutions to a plethora of industries in and around West Bengal. They have state-of-the-art warehouse facilities at four current parks in Ranihati, Rauta, and Panchla, near Kolkata, with a total area of 17,424,000 square feet and world-class amenities. The company is now on expansion mode with two more industrial parks spread across 500 acres and with an investment of INR 100 crores.  Alok Bajoria, Director, Ganesh Industrial Complex, said, “Within the steel and metals industry, construction, manufacturing, and fabrication are all significant subsectors with expansion potential. There is also room in the market for niche products and services. We believe that for Eastern India’s industrial sector to grow as a whole, the eastern regions must be provided with every conceivable infrastructural advantage, so that industrial progress is exponential. The industrial parks set up by Ganesh Complex are a testament to our commitment to this philosophy.”

Onmove, a high-speed, long-distance trucking aggregator, has recently announced that it has acquired 100% stake of Transin Logistics, a Hyderabad based trucking aggregation platform. Transin is a 100% asset light technology enabled trucking solution business operating in the Port ecosystem of India, with an annual revenue rate of INR 200 crores. Powered by a massive network of 34,000+ trucks catering to the EXIM and bulk cargo segments, Transin serves major blue-chip clients such as Aditya Birla, Ambuja Cement, ITC, Adani, Nuvoco among others. Onmove has raised a pre series A round of equity funding led by its existing investors Oliphans Capital with participation from several marquee angel investors like Mr Haresh Chawla. This acquisition is funded through a mix of equity and debt. Venture debt is raised from Chennai based AIF fund Anicut Capital which has also participated in an equity round. This partnership will help Onmove broaden its customer base in the commodity segment which is the largest consumer of trucks. It will further help Onmove strengthen its presence in the southern part of India thus ensuring better load stitching and higher utilization of assets. Besides, it will help Onmove enter the Port logistics business with focus on Port to Plant movement. Transin, in turn, will be able to expand its user services by offering end-to-end logistical assistance for the transport of final products from plant facilities to the end market. With this acquisition, Onmove has achieved an ARR of ~INR 600 crore.

India’s Grade-A warehousing sector is poised to show a growth of 15 per cent by 2025. According to the India Warehousing Report by CREDAI and Anarock, warehousing is poised to become a US$ 2.8 billion industry in the near future. The growth will be driven by increasing demand over Grade-B and Grade-C office spaces which are not big enough for emerging needs for modern and large infrastructure, the report said. “Government thrust on ease of doing business with focus on single window clearances by many states, land allotment, and even faster environmental clearances are aiding this sector extensively. This is the reason that its demand is increasing not only in metro cities but tier-II and -III cities as well rapidly,” said Harsh Vardhan Patodia, President, CREDAI. Over the last decade, India has revamped its outlook toward the warehousing sector from unorganised godown structures to a prominent asset class. Per the report, a total of 48.5 million sq ft of Grade-A warehouses have been leased in top 7 cities in 2021 and it’s expected to reach 55.8 million sq ft by end of 2023. It said that the total area leased for Grade-A warehousing space in 7 cities was 160 million sq ft, with the largest share of 37 per cent leased area in western region (Mumbai and Pune), followed by 32 per cent in southern region (Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad). The top three sectors contributing to the overall warehouse leasing space across 7 cities are third-party logistics, e-commerce and manufacturing.

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has been awarded the project to build India’s first multimodal logistics park (MMLP) in Chennai by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH). The project comes under the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan (NMP) launched in October 2021 and is aimed at improving multi-modal connectivity and last-mile connectivity across the country, according to a statement by the ministry. The estimated project cost is Rs. 1,424 crore. The total concession period is 45 years. The SPV will provide four-lane NH connectivity of 5.4 km with an estimated cost of Rs 104 crore and new rail siding to the MMLP site of a length of about 10.5 Km with an estimated cost of Rs 217 crore. “The MMLP will be developed in three phases with an estimated developer investment of Rs 783 crore Phase-1 development is targeted within two years i.e., by 2025 leading to commercial operations,” statement from the ministry added. The MMLP at Chennai which is strategically located at about 52 km from Chennai Port, 80 km from Ennore Port, and 87 km from Katupalli Airport will be a focal point of logistics in the southern region. It is estimated to cater to 7.17 Million Metric Tonne (MMT) cargo in a horizon period of 45 years. MoRTH is developing 35 MMLPs, out of which 15 are prioritised in the next three years.

The last two panel discussions focused on the ‘Warehousing standards – Logistics Parks and Buildings’ and ‘Importance of Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in warehousing operations.’ The Vice President‭‬‬‬‬‬‬, WAI moderated the discussion while Mahendra Waghule- Head – Projects & Development, Horizon Industrial Parks, Anubhav Gupta- Chief Strategy Officer, APL Apollo Tubes, Parag Warerkar – CMD at MR Warerkar and Charter Member WAI Ejaz Nathani – VP & National Head, Welspun One, Parmeet Singh Bhalla – Managing Director, BGSB Concrete Solutions (P) Ltd and K Sampath Kumar -Senior Counsellor, CII IGBC participated as panelists. ‬ The concluding panel saw Shakti Choube – Asst. Vice President & Sales Head, Godrej Koerber Supply Chain, Umesh Madhyan – Vice President Supply Chain, Hindustan Coca-Cola, Sourabh Raghuvanshi – Vice President – Supply Chain & Sales, Lava IntI., Sandeep Chatterjee – Director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India and Shashank Jaiswal – Country General Manager, UNL Global India as panelists while Vasu Ramanujam – Founder Member, WAI performed the job of a moderator emphasizing strongly on the relevance of advanced technologies in today’s times. Lot of stress was given on customer centricity, systems required for accurate demand fulfillment future projections. Vote of Thanks was given by Mohit K Kapoor, Chair- Events Committee, WAI, The event concluded on a positive note, providing a great platform to the industry stakeholders to unite, collaborate and discuss growth strategies to move forward to achieve the common goal – Growth. ‬

The discussion commenced with a speech by Dr SK Ahirwar, Joint Secretary, Logistics & Trade, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. He threw light on the current scenario of the Indian warehousing sector, while highlighting the ongoing developments and investments, NLP – its potential benefits, and other government initiatives in pipeline. The panel discussion on ‘Equipment standards – Storage systems and Material Handling Equipment’ focused on the standardization of the various pieces of Infra required for smooth running of a warehouse. It was moderated by the President who has over 25 years of experience across Supply Chain, Logistics, Freight forwarding, NVOCC operations, Technology, KPO, and Engineering industries. The panelists included Joint Secretary, Logistics & Trade, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, GoI, Chetan Kumria – Managing Director, Xcell Supply Chain, Vikas Choudaha – Sr. Vice President & Business Head, Godrej Storage Solutions, Mohan – Director, Armes Maini Storage Systems Pvt. Ltd., and Founder Member WAI, Umesh Madhyan – Vice President Supply Chain, Hindustan Coca-Cola, Narendra Patidar, VE Commercial Vehicles, including a presentation by Vikas Choudaha – Sr. Vice President & Business Head at Godrej Storage Solutions

The first panel discussion saw the warehousing experts from across the country discussing extensively on NLP which is expected to bring global standards to the warehousing infrastructure and operations. The panelists included Er. S. Bhardwaj – Dy. Director-General, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India, Bipin Sapra – Senior Partner, Ernst & Young, Pawan Kumar, DGM (Buss.), Central Warehousing Corporation, Prasanta Biswal – Advisor on Public Policy, Regulatory & Government Affairs, Horizon Industrial Parks, Devan Mitra Chenoy – Public Policy Manager, Amazon and Pritam Banerjee – Logistics Specialist, Asian Development Bank while the session was moderated by Rajesh Lal – CA, Hon. Treasurer, WAI. The panelists discussed on the potential benefits of NLP which is a comprehensive long-term plan designed to achieve international standard efficiency in services and bring down the high logistic costs to single digit before 2030, thus enabling a rank among the top 25 nations in Logistic Performance Index (LPI). The experts also discussed on how relevant it is for the industry to collaborate and work towards developing an interconnected and tech-driven framework to drive an integrated, cost-efficient, resilient, and sustainable logistics ecosystem. This panel members discussed the key targets, their strategic plans, and the potential for attracting investments.