| | JULY 20228LOGISTICS SECTOR IN INDIA ­ NAVIGATING THROUGH THE CRISISBy Thomas Knudsen, Managing Director, Toll GlobalP ost-GST (in 2017), we were assisting our customers to move from small state-wise hubs to large regional warehouses and constantly reviewing the distribution model to drive overall supply chain efficiency. This was a ma-jor shift for everyone since the traditional distribution models were being replaced with a much more agile and an efficient one, with greater visibility across the value chain, and Toll India made substantial investment to support our customer demands. Then, COVID came and blew everything out of the water. Most businesses were ill-prepared for an interruption of this magnitude. Logistics sector too got adversely impact-ed, particularly the asset-heavy warehousing and transporta-tion service providers.With the frequent lockdowns and business interruption, companies were forced to have a relook at their inventory and distribution strategy. From changes in the sourcing model, in-creased inventory holding, SKUs/product mix rationalisation, to `de-layering' the distribution network, organizations were forced to do everything possible to retain their market share. With the near collapse of traditional distribution channels, businesses had to launch direct to customer initiatives. Orga-nizations started considering Supply Chain Resilience models to deliver agility, flexibility and visibility.Globally, the pandemic has resulted in rising costs, ship-ping delays, fluctuating inventory and business disruption. All these challenges have driven many businesses to re-as-sess lowest cost, just-in-time logistics models and build great-er resilience into their supply chains. Businesses started strengthening their contingency planning to deal with such disruptions and started collaborating with their upstream and downstream partners. Sourcing and manufacturing are becoming more localized, and most global organizations have empowered their regional and country teams to take quick actions to effectively manage business disruptions.Businesses face the challenge to transform legacy supply chains for the future. But we also have a unique window of op-portunity to reorganize and become more adaptive and col-laborative with partners in the region. During the early part of the pandemic, logistics companies had to grapple with de-mands for increased storage space across all strategic ware-housing hubs. Apart from expanding footprint and driving cubic space utilization in warehouses, logistics providers had Thomas Knudsen, Managing DirectorINDUSTRY INSIGHTS
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