| | November 20218VANTAGE POINTL ogistics industry in India is es-timated to be worth $215 billion growing at a CAGR of 10.5 per-cent. Yet only about 10-15 percent is be-lieved to be owned by organized players. Rest of it has traditionally been frag-mented & unorganized.Having improved its ranking from 54th in 2016 to the 35th rank in 2018 in the logistics performance index; the Indian Logistics sector was trudging along smoothly till March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit & all of a sudden everything was at a standstill due to the lockdowns & restrictions.However, the ensuing turmoil & cha-os did not last very long for the dynamic Indian logistics industry through a lot of restructuring & realignment took place; it's also necessary to acknowledge that finally the pandemic acted as a catalyst for the growth of the Indian logistics in-dustry.Pre-pandemic era in India saw a lot of unorganised smaller players providing a plethora of services & at times beating the bigger players with their specialised services in their own niches; however, there were some inherent limitations -· Lack of vision to grow beyond certain services in certain routes/regions· Inability to harness the available tech-nology due to lack of investment, talent etc. · Unable to create synergies & better customer services/experience etc.· Dependence on the amply available cheap manpowerDuring the pandemic the logistics in-dustry had a very critical role to play in terms of keeping the nation moving for-ward in spite of the various restrictions & lockdowns. This required a coordinat-ed approach across various states & cit-ies of India. Hence, we saw a big churn & many smaller logistics providers were simply not able to cope up with such de-manding expectations; It was due to a lot of challenging factors including -· Inability to adapt to the dynamic de-mands· Dependence on manual labour, which became scarce due to the migrations etc.· Lack of technology use including dig-italisation, GPS devices, online systems etc.· Delayed payment cycles· Rising fuel pricesHowever, the organised providers had more cushion to absorb the downturn challenges during the early lock downs & once they had recovered from the ini-tial shock, they quickly realised that the pandemic also provided them with sever-al opportunities to grow & enhance their capabilities, some of these were -· Increased demand due to the exponen-tial increase in e-commerce· Provisioning daily essentials, move-ment of medical equipment, protective gear etc.· Increased demand due to the vacuum left by smaller logistics providers· Push to refine their vision &digitise many business aspects e.g. operations, payments etc. · Relative simplification of operations with statutory implementations of GST, E-Waybill & IRNCOVID-19 IMPACT ON INDIAN LOGISTICS INDUSTRY ­ A PERSPECTIVEBy Sanjay Bakshi, AGM-IT, SafexpressSanjay Bakshi
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