LEAP India, a supply chain solutions company, plans to raise ₹100 crore in next two months to enhance its wooden pallet capacity and improve geographic reach.

The company currently supplies about one million pallets made of wood imported from Russia and 20,000 containers to over 200 fast moving consumer goods and automobile companies on daily rental basis of ₹1.20-1.60. Typically, the contract for rentals are for three years.

LEAP (Leading Enterprise in Advance Pooling) through its in-house software MyLeap tracks movement of each pallets and places it with another customers once the goods are delivered at the warehouse.

With the new investments and growing demand from customers, the company expects its revenue to touch ₹ 100 crore this fiscal compared to ₹37 crore logged last year.

Earlier, the company has raised funding from Mayfield, Marico's Rishabh Mariwala, who manages Sharp Ventures, the family office of Marico founder and chairperson Harsh Mariwala, India Nivesh Growth Fund, Sixth Sense and TCI Ventures

Sunu Mathew, Managing Director, Leap India, said with the growing labour cost and corporates push to improve efficiency has increased demand for pallets across sectors to move their finished goods from factory to warehouse and then to dealers.

“With the country’s largest ever tax reform of GST kicking in, warehouses sizes are set to get larger. Improving efficiency in the supply chain and scaling up these large warehouses would be difficult without the usage of pallets. By leasing pallets to customers, LEAP is ensuring faster proliferation of pallets across India's warehouses,” he added

A veteran in this field, Mathew worked with the Australian company Chep, which is the largest pallet and container pooling service provider in India, before starting his own venture in 2013.

A nine-tonne truck requires 14 people and 3.5 hours to load and unload carton boxes. But by using pallets and forklifts, it will take 30 minutes to load and unload goods and bring in cost efficiency of 15-17 per cent compared to loading cartons directly onto the trucks, said Mathew.

Leap has 14 manufacturing centres and 22 warehouses across the country to manage inventory one lakh pallets at any given point of time. The cost of making a pallet varies between ₹1,200 and ₹1,500 and it has a life time of over 10 years.

Given the potential in India, the competition is fast catching up in this sector with expectations of China’s largest pallet company Loscam, owned by $38-billion Merchant Group, making an entry into India.

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