Movement of raw materials across borders & underutilization of resources affected the business in this pandemic.

Anil Kabra

- VP Enterprise Sales, XpressBees

What are the opportunities and driving force for the 3PL service providers?

Considering that the recent disruptions have affected the market trajectory to a considerable extent, factors like convenience, scalability, end-to end visibility and flexibility offered by 3PL service providers have become critical for business of any size. We believe 3PL relationships will continue to grow in an ecommerce and omni-channel world. Also, with customer experience taking precedence over cost reduction, the need to work with a 3PL service provider has picked up significantly. Clients today are looking for improving efficiency, offering the best customer experience and that is something where an end-to end logistics service provider like XpressBees can fit in.

How important is adoption of technology in this segment? Also, since 3PL players are emerging as the largest warehousing space occupiers, what are the expectations from developers to facilitate convenience in operations?

Technology has indeed brought about a revolution in the entire supply chain process processes for both the consumers as well as the service provider. We at XpressBees have invested in Artificial Intelligence and predictive analytics to handle demand fluctuations during the year and drive optimum performance of inventory management, vehicles & shipment processing technologies. Characteristics of a facility is one of the key decision making criteria. With unprecedented demand for warehouse space, developers can grab the opportunity and improve and standardize the safety and quality aspects of a warehouse across the board. Customers want the convenience of scalability & standardization.

For logistics firms, which sectors will drive the growth? What are your plans in terms of adding more warehousing space and technology adoption?

We do see healthcare, fashion, e-commerce, consumer goods, banking and finance driving the growth for the sector at large. In terms of business e-com, pharma and fashion clients have grown pretty significantly in the last few months. We do plan to expand and cover every pin code of this country by 2022 and do see increased investments in emerging technologies such as ML/AI, TMS, GeoMaps and IoT. We already have our entire operations working on our in-house technology and plan will continue to invest heavily into automation and technology.

How has the Covid pandemic disrupted the sector and what are the challenges in this space?

The pandemic has remapped the manner in which the supply chain and logistics sector operates. New technologies have become more relevant and imperative and the need to have the most efficient supply chain management has become paramount because of situations like Covid. Of late, there are rampant changes to ensure a much more robust and emphatic gameplay of supply chain and logistics in overall business efficiency and brand image. As far as the challenges are concerned the curb on movement of people and non-essential goods did affect the supply chain. While we saw a massive upswing in volumes through e-commerce model versus regular brick and mortar, the coronavirus outbreak did affect the movement of raw materials across the borders and labor capacity and underutilization of resources were some of the challenges that affected the business as well.

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