Crown Worldwide, a record keeping, logistics and work space management company, plans to invest $40-50 million (about ₹375 crore) over next five years to tap emerging opportunities post the Covid pandemic and further strengthen its 25 years of presence in India.

The US-headquartered company entered India to help multi-national companies set up business here and today it has 11 offices servicing over 1,500 corporate customers and 5,000 private clients.

Ken Madrid, Group CEO, Crown Worldwide said the record business in India was first started as a servicing office for foreign banks but soon the opportunities opened up and the first warehouse for storing records was started in Chennai followed by Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Coimbatore. The latest one in Bhubaneshwar was opened five years ago.

He added that the company was in the process of shifting its Bhubaneshwar office to a new facility, which is about 10 times bigger than the present one. It got delayed due to the Covid outbreak and will be completed soon, he said.

Started in 1965, relocation was the core business of Crown and it ventured into records management. Subsequently, it entered into logistics by helping senior managers of corporates shift from one country to another. The company recently started handling Fine Arts and long term wine storage business with Wine Cellar.

Opportunities ahead

Srinivas Krishnan, Regional Managing Director (South Asia) at Crown Worldwide said the company is looking at many opportunities as corporates continue with the hybrid work policy post the Covid pandemic with more demand for clean and sleek work space.

In record handling business, the company was making good progress to convince customers to store documents in cloud besides storing hard copy, but the process got slowed down due to Covid and is being reactivated again.

Similarly, the relocation business, which got stalled in the last few months due to the pandemic, is opening up slowly and there are few enquiries already, he said.

As the demand revives, the company will be setting up new warehouses for record keeping in tier-II and tier-III cities like Indore, Jaipur and Patna besides expanding in Delhi, Bangalore and Coimbatore as most corporates are moving to smaller cities with better infrastructure.

“Our turnover grew by 25 per cent to $20 million last fiscal with the record business accounting for two-thirds of our businesses in India. We are expecting an annual average growth of 20 per cent,” he said.

Indian banks have also started adopting to third-party record keeping and looking at companies that can store both hard copy and cloud-based storage solutions, said Krishnan.