Cold Chain, Hot Stakes

India’s cold chain has moved from scarcity to scale in less than a decade. Temperature-controlled logistics now underpins how the country consumes, distributes and delivers — from vaccines and dairy to frozen foods and rapid grocery fulfilment. Infrastructure has expanded, networks have widened and demand continues to accelerate across organised retail, pharma and convenience-led consumption. Yet the industry’s central challenge has shifted. Utilisation remains uneven, margins are tightening and response windows are shrinking as replenishment cycles compress and service expectations rise. The next phase will not be defined by how much capacity is built, but by how intelligently it is deployed — a transition industry experts say will separate expansion from performance and determine cold chain leadership in the years ahead. This cover story explores how operators are redesigning networks, embedding intelligence and defending margins as cold chain enters its execution decade. 

If India’s cold chain once struggled with gaps between nodes, the latest developments suggest the system is learning to close them. From specialised airside refrigerated trucks protecting cargo between terminal and aircraft to IoT-enabled monitoring that tracks temperature conditions in real time, the focus is shifting toward continuity rather than capacity. The launch of India’s first airside reefer truck at Hyderabad airport — designed to eliminate temperature exposure during ramp transfers and protect pharmaceutical and perishable cargo — illustrates how operators are targeting previously invisible breaks in the chain.

That shift is unfolding across segments. Pharma logistics is pushing in-city cold warehousing, agriculture supply chains are investing in farm-to-market connectivity, and vaccine programmes continue to demonstrate how temperature integrity can be maintained at national scale when systems are designed around reliability. These developments suggest a sector moving from infrastructure creation to operational precision.

Against this backdrop, industry estimates of steady market growth alongside uneven utilisation reflect transition rather than contradiction. Operators are redesigning networks, embedding visibility and prioritising throughput consistency. The Q&A that follows explores how leaders across storage, logistics, technology and infrastructure are reframing performance — revealing a cold chain increasingly defined by coordination, responsiveness and intelligence rather than footprint alone.

Over the last several years, how would you characterise the performance of India’s cold chain industry in terms of growth, utilisation, and profitability? Which cold chain segments in India are delivering sustainable growth today—and which are structurally under pressure?\

Kartik Jalan, Founder & CEO, Indicold Pvt. Ltd.: Over the last several years, India’s cold chain industry has moved from a fragmented, subsidy-led sector to a more demand-driven and organised growth phase. The market is expanding at a steady pace, with estimates indicating a 12–13% CAGR and significant long-term headroom as consumption of frozen, processed, and temperature-sensitive products rises. At the same time, utilisation and profitability remain uneven across segments.

A large part of the installed capacity continues to be single-commodity and seasonal, with more than 70% of storage still linked to crops such as potatoes. This creates volatility in utilisation and pricing, particularly in years of crop oversupply or weak farmgate prices. High energy costs and limited technology adoption continue to pressure margins in these traditional formats.

In contrast, structurally sustainable growth is emerging in frozen food, pharma, exports, and organised retail. These segments demand temperature integrity, traceability, and reliability, enabling year-round utilisation and stronger customer relationships. At Indicold, this shift is reflected in investments in automation, energy-efficient infrastructure, and in-house technology. Automated frozen facilities are improving density, reducing energy intensity, and delivering predictable service outcomes.

Going forward, the industry’s next phase will be defined less by capacity creation and more by operational discipline, technology, and integrated supply chain capability.

Deep Khira, CEO, Sub Zero Insulation Tech Pvt. Ltd.: India’s cold chain has grown steadily, driven by organised retail, QSR, dairy, pharma, and the rise of e-commerce and quick commerce. Growth is visible, but performance varies widely by segment and geography. Utilisation is improving in established corridors and categories, while remaining uneven in seasonal and fragmented routes. Profitability in logistics remains challenging for many operators because the business is highly competitive and service expectations keep rising.

Segments showing relatively sustainable growth today include pharma, QSR, dairy, and organised food supply chains with predictable volumes and tighter compliance. Segments under structural pressure include spot market agri and seasonal produce corridors where demand fluctuates, pricing is highly competitive, and service discipline across the ecosystem is inconsistent.

Pradeep Murugesan, Co-Founder, Just Deliveries: India’s cold chain industry has grown structurally and not cyclically but returns have not kept pace with expansion. Demand has been reshaped by three forces – changing urban consumption, organised food brands scaling nationally, and quick commerce compressing supply chain timelines. Urban consumers are spending less time in kitchens and more on convenience; frozen foods, ready-to-cook formats, pre-cut vegetables, and year-round availability of exotic produce. That shift alone has permanently increased temperature-controlled demand.

Pharma and QSR continue to deliver stable contract-backed growth. But quick commerce is the real disruptor, it has started to create metro-like demand density in Tier 2 cities and redefined replenishment frequency. That said, capacity has expanded faster than operational maturity. Utilisation remains uneven, and profitability is under pressure due to capital intensity and procurement-led pricing discipline. Cold chain in India is no longer constrained by demand, but it is constrained by efficiency.

How are cold chain 3PLs redesigning business models to balance pricing pressure, capex intensity, and service expectations?

Kartik Jalan: Over the past year, cold chain 3PLs in India have become significantly more disciplined about capital and returns. The focus has shifted from building capacity to building utilisation. Instead of standalone, asset-heavy facilities, operators are developing multi-client, multi-commodity networks that improve throughput, reduce seasonality, and strengthen capital efficiency.

Pricing pressure from large FMCG, QSR, and pharma customers is real. The response has been to move beyond storage toward integrated solutions—transport, inventory visibility, packaging, and planning. Increasingly, customers are paying for reliability, predictability, and service consistency rather than just space. This is also pushing providers toward long-term, contract-backed partnerships that support better planning and asset turns.

Automation and digital platforms are now central to the business model. They improve density, lower energy and labour intensity, and deliver traceability at scale—enabling operators to meet rising service expectations while protecting margins.

At Indicold, this approach has translated into investments in automation, in-house technology, and deep customer integration. The Indicold facility at Dholasan, India’s first fully automated frozen ASRS, and the Detroj site, India’s first four-way shuttle-based frozen facility, reflect this shift—toward higher utilisation, energy efficiency, and predictable service in Indian operating conditions.

Deep Khira: The strongest players are shifting away from purely asset-led growth toward models that improve asset productivity and reduce idle capacity. This includes hub-and-spoke networks and a sharper focus on route economics rather than generic capacity addition. We also see more modular expansion, adding capacity in phases tied to anchor customers and contracted volumes. Many 3PLs are also differentiating by offering packaged solutions such as storage plus transport plus monitoring, rather than competing only on per-kilometre rates. This helps justify pricing and creates stickier relationships.

Pradeep Murugesan: The industry is moving from building assets to asset orchestration. Asset expansion is giving way to asset-light aggregation models. Instead of building everywhere, forward-looking operators are leveraging underutilised capacity and increasing network productivity. Cluster-based network densification is replacing scattered expansion. Technology now acts as the control layer; real-time temperature monitoring, route optimisation, ERP integration, and SLA governance are no longer optional. Operators who improve utilisation without proportionately increasing capital deployed will outperform. Speed has become a baseline expectation & efficiency is the real differentiator.

Which customer engagement models deliver stability for providers and flexibility for customers?

Kartik Jalan: In India’s cold chain market, customer engagement is evolving from transactional storage relationships to strategic, risk-sharing partnerships. Given demand volatility and supply chain disruptions, both providers and customers are prioritising stability without losing flexibility. Multi-year, volume-aligned agreements are emerging as a preferred model, particularly in frozen foods, QSR, and pharma. These structures provide predictable utilisation and cash flows for service providers, while allowing customers to scale capacity based on demand cycles rather than investing in dedicated infrastructure.

Another important shift is toward joint planning and closer operational integration. Customers increasingly expect cold chain partners to participate in forecasting, inventory positioning, and network design. This reduces stock-outs, improves service levels, and helps manage demand variability across geographies and seasons. Flexibility is being enabled through shared infrastructure, distributed networks, and dynamic capacity allocation rather than fixed contracts.

Technology is strengthening trust in these partnerships. Real-time visibility, traceability, and shared data platforms are enabling transparency, faster decision-making, and better risk management. Outcome-based models—linked to temperature integrity, turnaround time, and accuracy—are gradually replacing pure space-based pricing. At Indicold, this translates into long-term, collaborative partnerships built on transparency, responsiveness, and performance, supporting both stability for providers and agility for customers in a fast-evolving consumption and export ecosystem.

Deep Khira: Models that work well are those that align capacity planning with customer demand visibility. Medium-term contracts with volume bands, agreed service levels, and clear escalation mechanisms tend to give stability without locking customers into rigid commitments. Dedicated fleet models are still the preferred strategy, while shared-user networks where providers can consolidate multiple customers on the same lanes are starting to get introduced. In practice, partnerships improve when there is transparency on demand forecasts, loading discipline, turnaround times, and performance scorecards. When customers and providers jointly manage these variables, both stability and flexibility improve.

Pradeep Murugesan: Long-term, multi-city B2B partnerships are the most resilient structure. Integrated warehousing and transportation offerings create alignment. Volume-linked commercial structures provide predictability. Quick commerce and organised retail require flexibility in replenishment cycles but flexibility does not come from idle capacity. It comes from network density and planning integration. The most successful cold chain providers are no longer vendors. They are embedded into their customers supply planning systems.

Given uneven infrastructure and demand volatility, which growth strategies help build resilience and defend margins?

Kartik Jalan: Cold chain providers in India are building resilience by moving from speculative infrastructure to disciplined, demand-linked capacity expansion. While pallet creation remains essential in a structurally under-supplied market, the focus has shifted to building the right capacity—automated, energy-efficient, and designed around long-term customer demand rather than seasonal cycles. This approach improves utilisation, reduces operating costs, and supports stable margins even in volatile environments.

Another important strategy is portfolio and segment balancing. Providers are combining steady, year-round sectors such as frozen and processed foods with more seasonal agri-linked demand. This reduces utilisation volatility and strengthens pricing power. Multi-temperature, multi-commodity infrastructure is also becoming critical, enabling operators to flex capacity and optimise asset productivity in a high fixed-cost business.

Technology and automation are emerging as core margin levers. High-density automated facilities, real-time visibility, and data-led planning improve throughput, reduce labour and energy intensity, and deliver consistency at scale. Strategic partnerships and contract-backed growth are further de-risking investments and improving capital efficiency.

At Indicold, this translates into automation-led pallet creation, in-house technology, and long-term customer alignment—reflecting the philosophy of building a future-ready, sustainable cold supply chain that combines scale, efficiency, and reliability.

Deep Khira: Resilience comes from three levers. First, building density in select corridors before expanding nationally. Second, standardising operating processes to reduce variance in loading, handling, and temperature integrity. Third, investing in preventive maintenance and uptime, because breakdowns and rework destroy margins quickly in cold chain. Providers that combine disciplined network expansion with strong SOPs and measurable service quality are better able to defend pricing and avoid margin leakage.

Pradeep Murugesan: Given uneven infrastructure, fragmented consumption centres, and recurring demand volatility, the most effective growth strategies are those that strengthen network economics rather than simply expand footprint. In cold chain logistics, resilience is built through structural discipline — aligning capacity with real demand, protecting asset productivity, and avoiding capital drag. Margin defence begins with operational precision. In a sector where energy intensity, compliance standards, and service reliability directly influence profitability, the difference between growth and strain lies in how intelligently assets are orchestrated.

Resilient operators are focusing on:

• Multi-client load consolidation to improve truck fill rates and distribute fixed fleet and refrigeration costs across diversified demand pools
• Cross-docking and high-velocity flow-through models instead of over-investing in static storage that risks underutilisation during demand troughs
• Cluster-based geographic expansion, building density within defined corridors to balance inbound and outbound flows before expanding into new territories
• Data-led planning and predictive routing to minimise empty miles, improve turnaround times, and enhance asset sweating
• Dynamic capacity alignment to match seasonal spikes without permanently inflating the fixed cost base

Cold chain investment without granular demand mapping has historically led to underutilised warehouses, lane imbalances, and capital locked into low-yield infrastructure. Expansion without density dilutes margins; infrastructure without throughput erodes returns.

The next growth phase will reward utilisation optimisation over infrastructure proliferation. Operators who treat network design as a precision discipline — constantly recalibrating routes, loads, and storage footprints to demand signals — will build resilience that withstands volatility. In this industry, discipline creates margin. Scale amplifies returns only when supported by density, data, and utilisation integrity.

What policy interventions or ecosystem enablers would support the next phase of scale and sustainability?

Kartik Jalan: India’s cold chain sector will scale and become more sustainable when policy shifts from capacity creation to ecosystem productivity. While schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana and 100% FDI have improved infrastructure, global benchmarks from countries like Netherlands and the United States show that long-term value comes from integrated networks rather than standalone storage. The next phase in India will require viability-gap funding for farm-gate pre-cooling, multimodal refrigerated logistics, and stronger last-mile connectivity. Renewable energy incentives and carbon-linked financing can help reduce operating costs in an energy-intensive sector, while cluster-based cold chain zones aligned with export corridors can improve utilization and reduce demand volatility. Digital logistics infrastructure and data sharing—aligned with the National Logistics Policy—can further enable traceability, benchmarking, and access to institutional capital.

At the same time, contract decisions in India are increasingly shaped by capabilities that directly improve reliability and transparency. Large food, pharma, and quick-service customers now prioritize end-to-end temperature visibility, IoT-enabled monitoring, predictive risk analytics, and control tower platforms that integrate operations, compliance, and inventory intelligence. Sustainability metrics such as energy efficiency, low-GWP refrigerants, and reusable packaging are also influencing procurement, as global customers align with frameworks promoted by bodies like the United Nations Environment Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization. As a result, technology, sustainability, and performance-linked models are moving from pilots to core differentiators in long-term cold chain partnerships.

Deep Khira: To support the next phase of growth, India needs stronger regulatory clarity and enforcement across the entire cold chain ecosystem, particularly in temperature-controlled transport of food and pharmaceutical products.

Today, standards for cold storage facilities are relatively structured, but transport compliance is uneven. There should be nationally defined and enforced norms for temperature control, vehicle insulation performance, monitoring systems, and hygiene protocols for food and pharma logistics. Certification mechanisms should ensure that vehicles and facilities meet defined thermal performance benchmarks before operating in sensitive categories.

These standards should not remain advisory. Enforcement through regulatory authorities at the time of vehicle registration and periodic compliance checks would significantly improve discipline across the sector. This would protect product integrity, reduce wastage, and create a level playing field for responsible operators.

In addition, long-tenure financing support for cold chain assets, incentives for energy-efficient equipment, and skill development for refrigeration and cold chain technicians would strengthen operational reliability. The ecosystem would also benefit from stronger integration between producers, processors, logistics providers, and retailers, supported by traceability and digital documentation standards.

If India wants to reduce food wastage, improve pharma compliance, and scale cold chain sustainably, policy must move from encouragement to structured enforcement and ecosystem coordination.

Soumalya Mukherjee, CEO, Tan90: The most impactful policy change would be infrastructure status with preferential lending rates. Cold chain operators pay 12-14% for capital today, when roads and ports get 8-9%. That gap is killing growth. The 4-5% difference isn’t a minor convenience; it’s killing the growth and making business expansion incredibly difficult, specifically in the case of mid-sized players. Think about what that means in practical terms: a 50-crore cold storage facility that could be viable at 9% interest becomes marginal at 13%. That difference determines whether you build in a tier-2 city where demand is emerging, or you don’t build at all. It’s the difference between taking a calculated risk on serving smaller food processors versus only chasing large, established clients in metros.

On incentives, subsidies for renewable energy integration specific to refrigeration would work, not generic solar subsidies, but ones tied to cold chain operations. Refrigeration is a continuous, high-load application. The business case for solar-plus-storage needs to account for 24/7 cooling requirements, monsoon backup, and peak demand charges.

When you structure incentives that recognize these operational realities, maybe viability gap funding for solar-thermal battery combinations, or accelerated depreciation for energy-efficient compressor retrofits, you make the business case close immediately. Right now, most operators view renewable energy as a nice-to-have in their ESG reports, not a core investment. The right policy changes that.

On technology, there’s often a gap between what gets discussed at industry events and what’s actually driving contract decisions on the ground. The technologies we see genuinely influencing contracts today are IoT-based temperature monitoring and route optimization systems. These address immediate client needs around compliance documentation and cost reduction. Clients want proof of compliance and lower freight costs. A pharmaceutical distributor needs documented, unbroken temperature logs for regulatory compliance. A retail chain needs to know their frozen products reached the store within temperature specifications. IoT sensors provide that assurance in a way that manual logging never could. At Tan90, we’ve seen operators with sophisticated route optimization winning bids even when their base rates are slightly higher, because the total landed cost comes out lower.

Other technologies like AI forecasting and blockchain traceability show promise, but they’re still in earlier stages of adoption. While there are some interesting pilot projects, widespread commercial deployment faces challenges around ROI timelines and integration complexity. Most clients still need to see clear payback within 18-24 months before making these investments at scale. Why? Because clients need to see clear ROI within 18-24 months, and most of these advanced technologies haven’t proven that business case outside of controlled pilots.

AI demand forecasting faces a different problem: most clients still trust their own forecasts based on their market knowledge and relationships. They’re not yet ready to let an algorithm override their judgment, especially when the cost of stockouts or wastage falls on them. This doesn’t mean these technologies won’t matter; they will, eventually. But right now, there’s a big gap between innovation theater and actual implementation at scale. The operators winning business today are the ones focused on executing the basics exceptionally well, not chasing every new technology trend.

Pradeep Murugesan: For the next phase of scale, the cold chain ecosystem needs structural enablers that reduce capital strain while improving utilisation discipline. From a policy perspective, shared infrastructure incentives can significantly improve asset efficiency — especially in high-density urban clusters where duplication of cold storage and handling capacity weakens returns across the system. Encouraging common-user facilities and multi-tenant hubs will help improve throughput economics rather than pushing fragmented build-outs.

Rationalised and predictable energy tariffs for cold storage are equally critical. Power remains one of the largest cost components in temperature-controlled operations. Policy clarity on industrial tariffs, peak load structures, and renewable integration would directly strengthen margin stability and sustainability outcomes.

Further, harmonised compliance norms across states — particularly around food safety, pharmaceutical handling, and transport documentation — would reduce administrative friction and improve inter-state velocity. Fragmented regulation adds cost and delays in a business where time and temperature sensitivity are non-negotiable.

Finally, stronger first-mile support — including aggregation centres, pack-house infrastructure, and farmer-level pre-cooling — will determine whether India’s cold chain scales with efficiency or with wastage embedded in the system.

The next phase of growth will depend not just on capital infusion, but on policy frameworks that encourage density, energy efficiency, and coordinated capacity development.

Which technology or intelligence capabilities genuinely influence contract decisions beyond pilots?

Deep Khira: In India today, buyers still prioritise reliability and execution. Technology influences contract decisions when it directly improves service outcomes and reduces risk. Capabilities that matter include real-time temperature monitoring, route and trip visibility, exception alerts, documented compliance, and strong maintenance systems that ensure uptime. Decision intelligence becomes valuable when it translates into measurable improvements such as fewer claims, fewer temperature excursions, better turnaround times, and higher vehicle availability. Buyers respond to outcomes more than dashboards.

Pradeep Murugesan: Technology in cold chain has moved beyond experimentation. Today, contract decisions are increasingly influenced by systems that demonstrate operational control, risk mitigation, and measurable accountability — not pilot-stage innovation. Real-time temperature telemetry is now foundational. Clients expect continuous monitoring with deviation alerts, audit trails, and corrective action logs. This is no longer a premium feature — it is basic compliance assurance.

Integrated visibility dashboards that combine fleet movement, temperature data, delivery timelines, and proof-of-delivery documentation create transparency across stakeholders. Brands are prioritising partners who can provide a single operational truth across nodes.

More advanced capabilities such as predictive replenishment alignment, demand-linked dispatch planning, and data-led route optimisation are beginning to influence strategic contracts, especially in QSR, dairy, and pharma segments where shelf life and service levels directly affect revenue.

Additionally, automated compliance documentation and digital audit readiness reduce friction during inspections and corporate governance reviews — an increasingly important factor in long-term partnerships.

Visibility is no longer a differentiator. It is hygiene. The real differentiator now is intelligence — the ability to convert operational data into proactive control, reduced spoilage, higher utilisation, and measurable service reliability.

How is the sustainability push driving innovation, and what is commercially viable today?

Kartik Jalan: Sustainability in India’s cold chain is moving beyond ESG narratives to a sharper focus on cost, reliability, and long-term commercial value. For most operators, energy remains the single largest lever, as power volatility and rising tariffs directly affect margins. This is why commercially viable innovation today is centred on high-efficiency design—advanced insulation, automation, variable-speed systems, and hybrid solar integration. These investments deliver measurable savings and are becoming the baseline for new facilities, similar to high-efficiency models seen in markets like Netherlands.

At the network level, sustainability is also shaping smarter capacity and distribution models. Multi-temperature, multi-commodity infrastructure, hub-and-spoke design, and closer integration with customer demand planning are improving utilisation and reducing waste. As demand shifts toward processed foods, pharma, and quick commerce, this flexibility is becoming critical to both resilience and profitability.

At Indicold, automation is central to this transition. Automated storage and retrieval systems, data-led planning, and tighter temperature control reduce energy intensity per pallet, improve asset turns, and enhance traceability. Automation also improves worker safety by reducing manual exposure to extreme cold and enables upskilling toward higher-value technical roles, strengthening long-term workforce sustainability. Increasingly, large food and pharma customers are linking procurement to efficiency, reliability, and transparency, accelerating the shift toward automation-led, performance-backed cold chain models in India.

Deep Khira: Sustainability is pushing practical changes that also reduce operating costs. Energy-efficient refrigeration, improved insulation, better door and airflow design, and tighter operating discipline reduce refrigeration run-time and fuel consumption. Network optimisation, improved load planning, and reducing empty kilometres are also commercially attractive because they improve profitability directly. Electrification is emerging as a serious pathway for urban and short-haul cold chain, especially where charging access and predictable routes exist. Viability improves when vehicles are engineered end-to-end for cold chain, including payload, insulation, and refrigeration integration.

Soumalya Mukherjee: Empty runs is probably the biggest opportunity. Most cold chain operators are running vehicles back empty 35-40% of the time. That’s fuel burned, driver time paid, and vehicle depreciation for zero revenue. That’s fuel burned, driver time paid, and vehicle depreciation for zero revenue.

• Solar-powered cold storage in semi-urban and rural areas is another win-win that’s viable right now. But notice the qualifier: it works where grid power is unreliable or expensive. In areas where operators are running diesel gensets for 8-10 hours a day because of power cuts, solar with battery storage pays for itself in 5-7 years even without subsidies. You’re replacing diesel that costs ?80-90 per liter with solar that’s free after the initial investment.
• Ammonia refrigerants instead of HFCs is another example of sustainability and economics aligning. Ammonia is more energy-efficient than HFC refrigerants, so operating costs drop. It’s also cheaper than newer synthetic refrigerants, and it meets environmental norms around phasing out high-GWP gases. For large cold storage facilities, ammonia retrofits make sense purely on operating cost grounds; the environmental benefit is almost a bonus.

What’s not viable yet:

• Electric refrigerated trucks at scale remain elusive. The technology exists, but the economics don’t work for most use cases. Battery weight reduces payload capacity. Charging infrastructure is inadequate, especially on intercity routes. Range anxiety is real when you’re carrying temperature-sensitive cargo worth crores. Maybe in 5-7 years, as battery technology improves and charging networks expand, but today? It’s mostly pilot projects and short urban delivery routes.
• Circular economy models for packaging- returnable containers, reusable insulation, etc sound great in theory. In practice, they require massive coordination across fragmented supply chains and reverse logistics that don’t exist yet. Who pays for collecting and sanitizing returned packaging? How do you track it across multiple handlers? The transaction costs currently exceed the sustainability benefits.

At Tan90, we help operators model these trade-offs- understanding when a greener solution actually improves their P&L versus simply meeting client ESG requirements.

The future of sustainability in the cold chain isn’t about virtue signalling; it’s about finding the innovations where environmental and economic incentives align, then scaling those ruthlessly.

Pradeep Murugesan: Sustainability in cold chain is no longer positioned as a parallel agenda — it is increasingly being aligned with operational efficiency and cost discipline. In a temperature-controlled environment, every inefficiency directly translates into both margin erosion and higher carbon intensity. The commercial reality is simple: sustainability initiatives gain traction when they improve utilisation and reduce waste.

Today, several levers are already economically viable:

• Higher fill rates through multi-client consolidation, improving asset productivity per trip
• Advanced route optimisation, reducing fuel consumption and empty miles
• Energy-efficient refrigeration systems and better insulation design, lowering power intensity per pallet stored
• Reduced product wastage through tighter temperature control and faster turnaround times, protecting both revenue and resources

As convenience-led consumption grows — particularly in QSR, dairy, and pharma — supply chain intensity increases. More frequent deliveries, smaller batch sizes, and tighter service windows can inflate both cost structures and emissions if not carefully managed. Without optimisation, convenience multiplies inefficiency. With disciplined network design, however, it creates structured throughput.

Efficient network architecture, asset sweating, and data-led planning are therefore not just environmental commitments — they are commercial imperatives. In cold chain logistics, sustainability becomes scalable only when it strengthens unit economics.

Over the next decade, will leadership be defined by scale, deeper integration, or superior intelligence?

Kartik Jalan: Over the next decade, leadership in India’s cold chain will be defined by the ability to combine scale with AI-driven intelligence and automation. Globally, the sector is moving from asset-heavy infrastructure to digitally orchestrated networks, where real-time data, predictive analytics, and autonomous systems drive both efficiency and resilience. As capital, land, and energy become more constrained, competitive advantage will come less from building capacity and more from optimising it continuously.

Deeper customer integration will remain critical, but it will increasingly be enabled by technology. AI-led forecasting, digital twins, and connected control towers are already transforming how mature markets such as Netherlands and Germany manage demand volatility, optimise inventory positioning, and reduce food loss. Automation is improving throughput, consistency, and safety, while data platforms are enabling dynamic pricing, routing, and capacity allocation. These capabilities are shifting cold chain providers from storage vendors to intelligent supply chain partners.

In India, this transition is still early but accelerating as consumption, exports, and organised retail scale. At Indicold, the focus is on building a future-ready, sustainable cold supply chain—leveraging automation, AI-led planning, and technology integration to improve utilisation, energy efficiency, and service predictability. The next decade will reward players who combine infrastructure, intelligence, and ecosystem collaboration to create resilient, responsive cold chain networks.

Deep Khira: It will be a combination, but the winners will be those who can scale with quality. Scale alone without service consistency will not sustain margins. Deeper integration with customers will matter, especially in categories where demand planning and service compliance are critical. Superior intelligence will become a differentiator when it helps providers improve asset productivity, reduce claims, and run more predictable networks. In other words, leadership will be defined by operational excellence supported by the right technology, not technology alone.

Soumalya Mukherjee: Different winners in different segments. Take pharmaceuticals and vaccines. That game is already decided. Scale and compliance infrastructure are what matter. You need pan-India reach because pharma distributors want one partner who can handle their entire network, not regional players they have to coordinate. You need GDP-certified facilities, validated processes, and the capital to maintain redundant systems because there’s zero tolerance for temperature excursions.

That’s why the pharma cold chain has already consolidated around a handful of players with national footprints. While a new entrant focused primarily on decision intelligence or customer integration would face significant challenges in displacing established players who’ve built strong compliance infrastructure and relationships over many years, there’s certainly room for innovation in how services are delivered within this framework.

But fresh food and agriculture? Completely different story. Here, I think integration is what wins. The mid-sized food processor- let’s say someone processing mangoes in UP or Alphonso in Ratnagiri doesn’t want to manage five different vendors for pre-cooling, cold storage, ripening, transport, and last-mile. They want one partner who understands their product, their seasonality, and their customers and can offer a complete solution.

The player who can say “We’ll handle everything from farm-gate to retail shelf, and you only pay for products that reach the customer within spec”- that’s compelling. It shifts risk, simplifies operations, and aligns incentives. That’s not about having the most warehouses; it’s about deep integration into the customer’s business.

This is also where you start seeing cold chain operators offering ancillary services like inventory financing against stored goods, quality assessment, and even market intelligence on pricing. When you’re that integrated into a client’s operations, you become very hard to displace.

But here’s what I really believe: decision intelligence becomes the differentiator for everyone.

Whether you’re a large national player or a regional integrated operator, if you can’t predict demand patterns, optimize routing dynamically, time your inventory decisions, and allocate your assets intelligently, you’re leaving massive efficiency on the table. I’d estimate 20-30% in most cases.

Think about what better decision-making unlocks:

• Demand prediction lets you pre-position inventory closer to where it’ll be needed, reducing emergency transport costs and improving freshness.
• Dynamic route optimization means you’re constantly finding better combinations of loads and routes, not just running the same routes you’ve run for years.
• Inventory timing helps you decide when to move products between storage, when to push them to market, and when to hold for better prices, especially critical for agricultural commodities with volatile pricing.
• Asset allocation ensures your most efficient facilities and vehicles are handling your highest-margin business, not randomly assigned.

Large players have been building internal data science teams to capture these benefits. But mid-sized operators can’t afford to have the scale to justify a team of data scientists and engineers. That’s the gap Tan90 is focused on: bringing enterprise-grade decision-making capability to operators who can’t build it themselves.

In five years, I think you’ll see that the market leaders in every segment, whether they won through scale, integration, or specialization, will all have sophisticated decision intelligence. It’ll be table stakes. The operators still making decisions based on gut feel and spreadsheets will be the ones getting squeezed out.

One more prediction: I think we’ll see the rise of highly specialized vertical players who go incredibly deep in specific product categories or geographic corridors. Someone who owns the entire cold chain for seafood from Andhra Pradesh to export markets. Another player who dominates dairy in Gujarat. A specialist in Northeast vegetables for metropolitan markets. They’re not trying to be everything to everyone; they’re trying to be indispensable in one vertical.

Pradeep Murugesan: Leadership in the next decade will not be defined by fleet size alone. In cold chain logistics, asset ownership is visible — but operating architecture is decisive. True leadership will emerge at the intersection of scale, integration, and intelligence — but only when anchored in structural discipline.

It will be defined by:

• Network density across high-consumption corridors, where balanced inbound–outbound flows improve asset sweating and reduce cost per pallet moved
• Capital efficiency, ensuring that every refrigerated truck and warehouse pallet position generates measurable throughput
• Deep integration with customer planning systems, aligning replenishment cycles, demand forecasts, and dispatch schedules rather than reacting to variability
• Standardised operating frameworks, creating predictable quality across nodes instead of performance that depends on local experience
• Decision intelligence powered by real-time data, enabling proactive temperature control, routing adjustments, and exception management

India’s cold chain industry already has world-class assets in pockets — modern reefer fleets, advanced cold rooms, and high-grade monitoring systems. The inconsistency lies in operating standards and execution uniformity. Knowledge has traditionally been experience-driven rather than framework-driven, resulting in performance variability across regions and partners.

The next structural leap will come from codifying execution — converting tacit operational know-how into scalable systems, measurable SOPs, and data-backed decision layers. Scale without structure will struggle. Scale built on density, integration, and intelligence will define enduring leadership.

Over the next 3–5 years, what performance trends do you anticipate for demand, pricing, and capacity expansion?

Kartik Jalan: Over the next decade, leadership in India’s cold chain will not be defined by who builds the most capacity, but by who deploys that capacity most intelligently. As capital becomes more expensive and demand remains uneven, scale without utilisation will become a liability. The winners will be those who move beyond infrastructure to deeper customer integration—embedding themselves in demand planning, inventory strategy, and network design. This shift is already visible across pharma, processed foods, exports, and quick commerce, where reliability, responsiveness, and transparency are becoming more important than price alone.

Scale will still matter, but only when it is flexible, multi-temperature, and supported by automation and real-time decision intelligence. Mature markets such as Netherlands and Germany show that technology-led operations drive utilisation, energy efficiency, and customer stickiness. In India, this will separate long-term leaders from asset-heavy players.

At Indicold, the focus is on building a future-ready, sustainable cold supply chain—combining automation, data, and energy-efficient infrastructure with long-term partnerships. The next decade will reward companies that evolve from storage providers to intelligence-led supply chain partners, creating resilience, improving service consistency, and delivering measurable value to customers and the broader food ecosystem.

Deep Khira: Demand should continue to rise as organised supply chains expand and customers demand more reliability and compliance. Pricing pressure will remain, but providers who can demonstrate consistent performance and lower total cost of ownership for customers will be better positioned to hold pricing. Capacity will expand, though the more disciplined players will add capacity selectively in lanes and segments where utilisation can be sustained. We will also see increased focus on higher-quality assets, better insulation standards, and more structured service-level contracting. This should gradually improve industry maturity and reduce wastage.

Soumalya Mukherjee: The demand picture for the next 3-5 years is really a story of two diverging markets growing at very different rates. On one side, you have quick commerce and D2C food brands, which are the explosive growth story. We’re probably looking at 30-40% annual growth from a relatively small base today. Ten-minute delivery of fresh produce, ice cream delivered to your door, premium meats shipped directly from farm to consumer, all of this requires cold chain infrastructure that barely exists today.

The requirements are also different: more distributed micro-fulfillment centers, faster turnaround times, and smaller batch handling. This is creating opportunities for new entrants and forcing traditional players to adapt their models. On the other side, you have traditional retail cold chain- supermarkets, wholesale distribution, and conventional supply chains. This is still growing, but more sedately, probably 10-12% annually. It’s a mature market with established relationships and incremental improvements rather than disruption.

What’s interesting is that these two markets are creating very different asset requirements. Quick commerce needs agility and location- smaller facilities in urban cores with rapid turnover. Traditional retail needs scale and efficiency, large facilities with optimized operations. I don’t think one player easily serves both without essentially running two different businesses.

On pricing, I see a continued squeeze in the middle with divergence between premium and commodity segments. Premium players serving pharma, organized retail, and prepared foods with high service levels and compliance requirements will hold margins in the 8-10% range. Why? The complexity of what they do, the capital required, and the consequences of failure create natural barriers to competition. Clients will pay for reliability and compliance. But commodity cold storage basic warehousing for potatoes, onions, and general agricultural goods is going to see margin compression. We’re probably heading toward 4-5% margins as capacity oversupply continues.

Too many people saw cold storage as a real estate play and built capacity without enough attention to demand quality, location strategy, or operational efficiency. That capacity still needs to earn some return, so it competes on price, which drags the whole segment down. The middle-tier players are not premium enough to command high prices, not low-cost enough to win on price; those are the ones in trouble. You’re going to see consolidation as some get acquired, others exit, and the survivors either move upmarket or downmarket.

On capacity, here’s the paradox: we’re going to see 12-15% annual capacity addition, but utilization will stay stuck around 65-70% on average. Why? Because capacity is being built in the wrong places, or at the wrong spec, or by developers who see it as infrastructure investment rather than an operating business. What really concerns me is the widening gap between best performers and average operators. Average operators are at 60% utilization, barely breaking even, and unable to invest in improvements.

This gap creates a vicious cycle: best performers can invest in better systems, attract better clients, and pull further ahead. Struggling operators cut prices to fill capacity, which makes it harder to invest, which makes them less competitive, which leads to more price cuts. The big strategic question for the industry is: whoever solves the utilization problem wins. And here’s the key insight: this isn’t about building more warehouses. We don’t need more capacity in aggregate; we need better utilization of existing capacity.

This is fundamentally a technology and marketplace problem, not an infrastructure problem. The physical assets exist; we’re just incredibly inefficient in how we utilize them. For Tan90, this is exactly the opportunity we’re pursuing. While India certainly needs continued investment in quality cold storage infrastructure, as it was recognized in the 2025 Union Budget allocations, what we’re focused on is helping operators maximize the productivity of their existing assets through better decision-making. The issue isn’t just absolute capacity; it’s about dramatically improving how efficiently that capacity is utilized.

If we can help a mid-sized operator improve utilization from 60% to 75%, that’s a 25% revenue increase with minimal capital investment. That operator becomes more profitable, can pay better rates for quality cargo, can invest in service improvements, and becomes more competitive. Multiply that across hundreds of operators, and you start solving the industry’s utilization problem while creating a sustainable business model for ourselves. The next 3-5 years aren’t going to be about who builds the most capacity. They’re going to be about who uses capacity most intelligently. That’s a very different game, and one where software and intelligence matter more than concrete and compressors.

Pradeep Murugesan: Demand will remain structurally strong across frozen foods, organised fresh, pharma, QSR, and quick commerce, especially as Tier 2 markets mature. Historically, Tier 2 cold chain demand was led by agriculture, followed by pharma and QSR expansion. Quick commerce is now rapidly reshaping that hierarchy and accelerating demand density in non-metro cities. Pricing discipline will continue as enterprise procurement becomes more sophisticated.

Capacity expansion will shift from greenfield asset creation to utilisation optimisation and aggregation models. India’s cold chain industry is transitioning from infrastructure creation to intelligence creation. The next decade will reward orchestration over ownership, discipline over expansion, and intelligence over scale.

Quick commerce has made cold chain less about storage and more about responsiveness without losing control. This churns out the work systems of cold chain logistics. The old rules don’t work here. That’s the real challenge now. And that’s where the next competitive edge will come from.