Prolonged work hours for employees, using Rajdhani Express as a back-up and creating dedicated delivery teams for the festival season are some of the steps logistics firms are taking to deal with the ongoing ‘bumper offers’ by e-commerce as well as brick and mortar players.

As online firms and traditional retailers race each other to lure more shoppers, more and more merchandise needs to be transported. This has become a huge business opportunity for logistics firms.

This month, DotZot expects to clock a 50-60 per cent increase in pick-up and delivery of products against last month. Delhivery looks to notch up 2.5-3 times higher business during the festival season. And Safexpress, which counts a longer festive season from Onam in September to Christmas in December, anticipates it will handle 1.35 times the average volumes handled in the remaining nine-month period.

Capacity hike

Logistics firms have, therefore, spruced up capacity. “We had to take steps to align ourselves with our customers. So, staff are not being sanctioned holidays easily, people have to work longer hours and will be incentivised accordingly,” said Sanjiv Kathuria, CEO and Co-founder, Dotzot, an arm of DTDC that focuses on e-retail logistics.

Safexpress, which has been targeting the e-retail segment for a year now, did not need to ramp up its warehousing space as it has 19 logistics parks across the country. But it has hired more people to serve online customers, apart from adding more vehicles, said Vineet Kanaujia, Vice-President, Marketing, Safexpress.

The company has extended a dedicated fleet and team to deliver furniture from online mart Fabfurnish and fit them for customers this Diwali in Bangalore. Logistics firms get the potential business projections much in advance from their customers. “Preparations to meet high business volumes began in May-June. Moreover, the sale schemes are spread over a much longer duration now, a move that prevents sharper spikes. Higher business starts from August and extends till December-January,” said TA Krishnan, co-founder, Ecom Express, a logistics firm that focuses on last-mile deliveries in 168 cities with 250 delivery centres.

Sahil Baruah, co-founder and CEO, Delhivery, said while the company was seeing 2.5-3 times higher volumes than normal days.

But despite all the preparations, the actual turn of events may be different from the projections, which may push logistics firms to have a Plan B in place. “We book airline capacity in advance. But in this festive rush, passenger bookings are also high and passenger luggage is given first priority, so there is a larger likelihood of shortage in freight space. So, we are also using Rajdhani Express trains as a back-up. For instance, in the Delhi-Mumbai sector, the Rajdhani takes 18 hours. It is better to get on a fast train than wait for airline capacity,” said Kathuria of Dotzot.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW