E-bill of Lading is the future of Logistics: Shankar Shinde

FIATA Paperless bill of lading was launched by the FFFAI in India recently to integrate all modes of transportation, enhance efficiency and provide seamless and uninterrupted digitized supply chain solutions to the customers. Shankar Shinde, Chairman, FFFAI, while speaking at the ongoing ACAAI convention said, “Digitalization and Paperless transactions are the future of the business. Government of India has shown interest and is supportive to activate eBL to ensure active supply chain at any stage and with the support of the government aggressively working towards looking into regulation (Banking and electronic documentation)to align for implementation and acceptance across the stakeholders and Government Agencies on Legal grounds which is expected shortly. We have already experienced the success of eBL execution in some of the countries and shortly there will be are confident that there will be high acceptance and adoption at all levels. One should look forward to be first to onboard to grab the opportunity.”

This will also reduce fraud with transparency on real time basis visibility as there would be no physical movement of documents and systems will based on messages exchange with traceability and delivery to right title holder discharging /defacing online through systems, he added.

Shinde further added that in a market like India, having own bill of lading is a challenge as presently the logistics sector has to be registered to issue MTO Bill of lading for which more than one mode of transport in addition to sea would be required. “The first step towards this would be to empower the logistics service providers in capacity of issuing the Bill of lading as carrier and take the ownership which comes with responsibility to build trade confidence, its necessary to understand how it functions and enables smooth operations. Many stakeholders have already started taking the advantage of the bill of lading, which also maintains the statistical confidentiality of your business. eBill of lading is a completely seamless and paperless process which involves technology like Blockchain and others and it’s going to be the future of logistics industry to adopt towards future business prospects.”