Comments
North Eastern Carrying Corporation (NECC), a ₹530-crore listed logistics player, plans to enter the last-mile e-commerce logistics space.
“E-commerce is today’s demand. Now everyone is thinking of the business-to-consumer (B2C) segment. We will have a subsidiary that will look at this,” Sunil Jain, Chairman and Managing Director of NECC, told BusinessLine .
The company at present operates in the traditional logistics space, offering full-truck-load and less-than-truck-load cargo services to companies in the pharmaceutical, FMCG, automobile, and steel and mining sectors. Its existing clients include Dabur, GSK, Unilever, Maruti and Tata Steel.
NECC will start with offering last-mile delivery services in the National Capital Region (NCR) and other northern cities by this fiscal-end.
It expects to leverage its expertise in delivering goods in the difficult terrain of the North-East. The firm has a good delivery network in the East and North-East and believes it can ride on the existing strength to expand last-mile services in the region.
It books cargo through a network of over 250 branches across India. It primarily has booking branches in the South, West and North, with delivery branches in the East and North-East.
Admitting that there is huge competition in the last-mile delivery segment in NCR, the company says it decided to enter at a time when the competition is becoming saner and firms are not operating on losses to capture market share.
“While the margins are low in last-mile delivery in this (NCR) space, we feel the margins will be better in the North-East region,” said Vineet Goel, Corporate Head - Strategy, NECC.
No acquisition plans “We are in the process of tying up with various players in different segments,” added Jain. The company, however, is not considering any acquisition in the segment.
“We have to invest in IT, manpower, barcode scanners and delivery bags. We will source delivery boys from external agencies, as is the norm in the industry,” said Goel.
Jain is a second generation entrepreneur — the company was set up in 1968 by his father Jaswant Rai Jain. It got listed on the BSE in 2012-13, and will soon be listed on the NSE, said Goel.
The NECC stock closed at ₹60 on Tuesday on the BSE.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.