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Venture Supply Chain Pvt Ltd, an over three-year-old transportation company, is riding high by taking care of its drivers, providing them benefits such as Provident Fund, and maintaining two drivers per truck for vehicles that drive long distances, of over 1,500 km.
To enable drivers to adhere to the promised time-table for the customers, the firm has put back-up trucks at strategic locations on the route between the North and the East, where its trucks ply.
In case of a vehicle breaking down midway, these back-up trucks — which the firm calls ‘ambulances’ — reach the site within three hours.
Route guides
The company has a proprietary information system on routes, including information such as quality of road, number of lanes — beyond the ones on Google Maps — that help the drivers find alternative routes in case of driving issues like fog, Sainath Panigrahi, General Manager - Sales and Operations, VSCPL, told BusinessLine .
Panigrahi claims there have been instances where customers have shifted part of their overall business to other transport service providers, only to return to VSCPL, because of the firm’s practices.
The comapny’s customers include a mix of e-commerce, third-party logistics and automobile firms — Ecom Express, Amazon, Flipkart, DTDC, Blue Dart, Bajaj Electricals, Hero MotorCorp and Honda, according to Rajesh Kumar Singh, Managing Director, VSCPL.
Covering interiors
The company has so far largely focussed on line-haul logistics involving distances of over 1,000 km.
It now plans to get into shorter distances, such as intra-State movements of 100-300 km in Assam, Jharkhand and Odisha, apart from servicing smaller cities.
“We are moving upcountry — to newer cities such as Nagaon, Dimapur, Tinsukia, Dibrugarh and Silchar in Assam; Siwri, Raniganj and Durgapur in West Bengal, and Sindri in Jharkhand.
The company, which expects to post a turnover of ₹120 crore in 2017-18, hopes its topline will shoot up to ₹250 crore.
The number of trucks are also expected to double in the next one year, according to Singh, who said the demand is sharper than the supply.
The funding for these will be met from the firm’s internal resources, and it does not have immediate plans to raise funds.
VSCPL firm has around 800 drivers for its fleet of 400-odd trucks. It expects to grow on the e-commerce sector and other segments to get a larger portion of the transportation pie on the Delhi-Guwahati and Delhi-Kolkata routes.
About 500 drivers are on the company’s rolls and the rest are on contract. Those on the firm’s rolls primarily drive longer distances.
According to company estimates, the amount spent on pure road transportation in India was $60 billion in 2017, and is expected to touch $90 billion by 2020.
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