Call it a profit opportunity or unveiling of a new goldmine, the logistics space has been able to capture investors’ attention for all the right reasons. Sitting on the back burner for decades, supply chain domain has proven its power during the times of crisis and emerged as the SHINING STAR of every business vertical. Growing investments into this field has only accentuated the performance and projection of this MIGHTY BEAST. This resurgence has been ably supported by the advent of tech-savvy and eco-conscious supply chain startups who are harmonizing and optimizing the supply chain network of the country. This Story captures the trendsetting landscape enabling a constant infusion of investments from ivy league investors. Here’s an attempt to capture investors’ evaluation strategy for investing, some ground rules for startups to sustain & survive in tough times and their poised role to lead the growth trajectory…
India's private equity industry has evolved significantly, with a broadened investor base that quadrupled from 200 to 800 active investors since early 2010s, diverse pools of capital, and acceleration in buyout capital for quality assets, as highlighted in a recent Bain & Co., research report. This has enabled tremendous growth in exit opportunities, complemented by the growth in strategic sales and secondary markets, resulting in value capture of 10x to 20x for multiple investors across investment cycles since the 2010s. A supportive regulatory landscape, innovative digital infrastructure, and deepening maturity of founders and talent have all led to this spurt in investment landscape for startups. Indian private equity, bolstered by a maturing ecosystem, demonstrates confidence and resilience to navigate the turbulence ahead and continue its accelerating flywheel of growth.
Another interesting research by Redseer Strategy Consultants highlighted that India has in the past weathered such economic storms owing to strong business fundamentals. In the next few years, India will shine as the preferred investment haven despite certain challenges. India may see 100-plus matured, large-scale, profitable startups in the next five years. About 20 of these startups are already being listed and the others can look at an IPO journey. Until 2021, investors had a fear of missing out and had made several investments without due diligence. In 2022, a gradual shift was witnessed in the investment approach. In 2023, startups have to show how differentiated they are. They must demonstrate their scalability and ability to grow and demonstrate how they are reducing cash burns. Taking cognizance of the matter, Indian startups have now begun to prioritize profitability and are focused on getting their fundamentals right. The attitudinal shift makes the Indian startup ecosystem attractive to investors.
Latest updates only reflect the reigning supremacy of Indian startups when it comes to attracting investors… Some of the world’s largest logistics players and private equity fund managers such as Panattoni, Investcorp-NDR Group, RMZ, Hiranandani-Blackstone, Actis, Assetz Property, Ivanhoe Cambridge and Prologis are fast making a foray or are expanding their wings into this highly promising Indian industrial and logistics space, which has a total stock of about 350 million square feet (msf).
As per an IBEF report, the development of industrial and logistics parks, as well as data centers, is a new bright spot on the Indian real estate heatmap. In 2022, these two segments received US$1.8 billion in Private Equity (PE) / Venture Capitalist (VC) investments, representing a 29% increase year on year. The industry garnered investments worth US$1 billion (Rs8,257 crore) at the beginning of 2022. Over the last four years (2019-2022), the warehouse and logistics sector has received a total institutional investment of US$5.4 billion, with 2022 accounting for a major 35% portion. The logistics and supply chain management sector has been a key beneficiary, reflecting a significant 35% growth in investments for the year.
As part of the latest funding landscape, logistics startup Agraga has raised Series A funding of $8.5 million (Rs70 crore) led by venture capital firm IvyCap Ventures, with participation from Alteria Capital. Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad has bet $40 million (around Rs320 crore) on Pune-based logistics company Xpressbees. Welspun One Logistics Parks (WOLP) has successfully concluded the initial close of its second Alternative Investment Fund (AIF), WOLP Fund 2, raising Rs500 crores from domestic high net worth and family office investors within a short span of eight weeks. The speed of the raise underscores the strong investor confidence in both, the Welspun One platform and the prospects of the warehousing and industrial sector in India. Celcius Logistics Solutions Pvt Ltd, which operates the cold chain marketplace Celcius, has completed its Series A funding round to take the total amount to Rs100 crore ($12.2 million) from Venture capital firm IvyCap Ventures.
Dr. Ivo Ganchev, Founding Director, the Centre for Regional Integration, was quoted as saying, “Opportunities are vast and Indian entrepreneurs have the potential to benefit from them. On one hand, as Bain and Company point out, structural factors such as low leverage, tech adoption, and favorable demographics create conditions for India’s continuous growth. On the other, due to its relative market openness, bilingual workforce and global connections, India has strong soft power within the international business community. The potential of these strengths can be further amplified when combined with correct market positioning and strong leadership to fuel the next chapter of India’s growth story.”
Such a buoyant landscape propelled us to speak to the enthused investors’ community who is actively partaking in the supply chain startup growth bandwagon. The discussions led to them revealing fascinating facets of investing. Here’s presenting to you some of the most striking insights unveiled by them…
How has the supply chain investment landscape shaped over the years?
Pramod Gupta
Pramod Gupta, Founder and Lead, TGF Advisors LLP: All of us recognize the potential of supply chain management in the country. We have been talking about significant breakages happening in the supply chain in the country and the associated costs, as compared to the Western countries. This has been adversely impacting India’s competitiveness, export performance, etc. Lately, a lot of work has happened from the government’s side on the Supply Chain front. Interestingly we have witnessed a plethora of logistics-tech startups of varied size emerging from the country in the last 7-8 years to solve these challenges. It’s an exciting space to be in as we move forward. Startups will continue to invest, and their scaleup journey will speed up further, given that initiatives like Aadhar linkages, GST implementation and use of data analytics to plug revenue leakages are leading to increasing formalization of the Indian economy. But we still have a very large cash economy. The pace of formalization needs to pick up pace.
Trucking is still quite fragmented in our country. Railway freight has the potential to become very big, but there are enormous amounts of breakages on the first mile and the last mile, which need to be ironed out. Waterways are virtually non-existent. Then we have a big issue around non-acceptance of Electronic Proof of Delivery (EPoD). As most organizations are just not tuned to the concept, this results in delaying the cargo movement substantially. Moreover, large organizations still treat the trucks and the truck drivers with a fair amount of contempt. Even if trucks move significantly faster, if they are held up for days for loading and unloading, then the benefit of faster speeds on highways is lost. It also significantly impacts the network and has significant cost implications.
In terms of supply chain for foreign trade, the whole world is putting up higher-and-higher non-tariff barriers and India is no exception. That also impacts supply chain efficiencies. Each of these big scale problems presents an investment opportunity in the area of supply chain, subject of course, to government policies and regulatory framework also evolving simultaneously.
Ankit Sethi
Ankit Sethi, COO – SE Asia & India, Fung Investments: Supply chain was not in the priority list for VCs, especially when compared to more in-vogue sectors. Limited knowledge about the sector within the VC ecosystem also played a role in this with corporates/ corporate VCs leading the charge in fostering innovation and startups. With the confluence of various macro and micro trends shaping out in the last few years, supply chain management and logistics management has gained prominence in the larger investor ecosystem with the number of deals, total funding amounts and valuations increasing consistently.
Akhil Srivastava, Director – Supply Chain, AB InBev: Supply chains and its evangelists are striving for continuous focus around maximising velocity to serve, minimising variability and in process building real-time visibility solution platforms. The supply chain tech space has of late seen surge in new incumbents evolving the techstack (which most claim as proprietary algorithms) to gain real-time data based analytics for actionable insights. Very recently firms like Pando, Roambee, Fareye, Nebularc, etc., have shown profound interest from both investor community as well as established corporates.
Akhil Srivastava
The world of RTTVP (real-time track and visibility protocol) has seen upsurge and tick in investments. Most of brands and product firms envision that data based decision centric supply chains will be both competitive advantage as well as opportunity to farm data for future digitization and monetisation. These supply chain tech stack firms can play pivotal role to not just predict but with deeper data mining start prescribing how supply chains of futures will help bring optimisation in business and key drivers of inventory management, cost arbitrage as well as sustainability pledges for future emissions reductions.
Companies will thrive and gain momentum and our supply chains, which used to be static and phone calls enquiry dependent will move towards dynamic and action oriented just like today’s smartphones, which can have our pulse on 24*7 basis with alerts and notifications to rule out any deviations and eventuality. The smart chains will be the game of future, and these will lead to market leadership and apex positions for firms, which embrace data centricity based analytical supply chains …. The Pulse check … is your supply chain Ready for One!!
Arindam Mukhopadhyay
Arindam Mukhopadhyay, Partner, India Accelerator: Supply chain investment landscape in India has undergone significant changes reflecting the growth and evolution of the Indian economy over the last few years. While in the past, investments were limited primarily to infrastructure projects such as roads, ports, and railways, in recent years, there has been a shift towards more sophisticated and technology driven supply chain investments.
One of the key drivers of this change has been the growth of e-commerce in India, which has led to increased investment in logistics and last-mile delivery infrastructure. Companies such as Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and Delhivery have invested heavily in building out their supply chain networks, including warehouses, fulfilment centres, and delivery fleets.
There are other sectors such as manufacturing, retail, and healthcare, which have also seen increased investment in supply chain infrastructure. Further, rise of technology has also played a key role in shaping the supply chain investment landscape in India. This includes investments in automation, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize supply chain processes and reduce costs.
What factors have led to this strong spurt in investments by VCs and PEs in Supply Chain?
Pramod Gupta: To a certain extent, whenever there is a large problem to be solved or a big opportunity to be leveraged, innovative minds get activated. Interestingly supply chain, of late, has been one of those promising domains for startups. This territory, though highly complex and vast, is still at a very nascent stage of technological evolution and it makes perfect sense for young minds to put their energies into something which is practically a crucial part of every business.
India’s imperative as well as focus on improving its supply chain efficiencies, trade competitiveness and ease of doing business are driving the spurt in investments. We are witnessing a sea change in the policy framework and pace of implementation in the area of supply chain. There has been a paradigm shift when it comes to developing logistics parks, GST implementation, Mission Gatishakti, Bharatmala, etc. There is modernization happening in ports development, railways infrastructure and road network, to name a few. The new National Logistics Policy (NLP) puts equal emphasis on softer aspects like digitalization and process simplification.
While many of the initiatives have already progressed significantly, the road ahead is even more exciting. All these factors have led to increased investments in supply chain startups over the last few years, and this tailwind is likely to continue in the foreseeable future.
Ankit Sethi: The last few years have seen supply chains being disrupted like never before. The evolving geopolitical landscape has put pressure on the existing structures and has brought supply chain resiliency right on top of the global boardroom agenda. Consumer behavior has been rapidly changing with consumption being increasingly digitally influenced and consumers looking for an omni-channel experience. Consumers are seeking shorter lead times and a higher degree of convenience resulting in re-organization of supply chains. Supply chain is also key to the fight against climate change with Scope 3 emissions accounting for >80% of GHG emissions.
All these trends have put pressure on supply chains to be agile, transparent, digital, sustainable and collaborative, and are therefore creating new opportunities for innovation. Governments are also doing their bit, as seen in India, to boost the sector by investing in infrastructure – both physical and digital.
Arindam Mukhopadhyay: There are several factors that have led to a spurt in VC and PE investments in supply chain:
Growth of E-commerce: The rapid growth of e-commerce has created a huge demand for efficient supply chain solutions and VCs and PEs have made significant investments in e-commerce, logistics, warehousing, and last-mile delivery companies.
Government Initiatives: The Indian Government has launched several initiatives such as National Manufacturing Policy and the Make in India campaign, which aim to boost domestic manufacturing and create a more efficient supply chain ecosystem.
Emergence of Technology: The emergence of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and blockchain have transformed the supply chain industry by optimizing processes and improving efficiency.
Changing Consumer Demand: Consumer behaviors are changing with the rise of new models such as quick commerce, hyperlocal etc., which has led VC and PE investments in these areas.
Globalization of Business: Companies are increasingly relying on global supply chains to source materials and distribute products and VCs and PEs have invested in companies that offer cross-border supply chain solutions to help companies expand their reach.
Are there any challenges that you feel should be ironed out before looking out for investments when it comes to supply chain startups?
Ankit Sethi: Founders should be careful about adopting a one size fit all approach. The context within which supply chains operate can alter significantly between geographies and industries, and therefore picking up established models from other ecosystems may not be the right approach. Localization is essential.
Akhil Srivastava: As investors, we analyze these aspects:
Which Quadrant are supply chains looking to solve and how, for which I refer to the quadrant designed by eminent Prof. Hau L. Lee, Thoma Professor – Operations, Information and Technology, Stanford Graduate School of Business…
What Wins/Victory does the startup wishes to get of three Vs – Velocity, Visibility or Variability.
Velocity: In today’s context of instant gratification, startups are solving for speed to deliver measured by Service Level and Rate my Delivery.
Variability: Today’s supply chains need to ensure minimal disruptions and variations to ensure standardization of product with consistency and conformity.
Visibility: Today’s supply chains need to work on digitization for ensuring Analytics based Real-Time intervention for actionable insights. Investments Thesis should hence be covering above two concepts along with the Risks and Reward matrix.
Pre Revenue Startups: The idea and problems they are looking to solve and tech driven models to enable faster adoption will be primary drivers while investing in early (pre revenue firms). What would also be critical is to see teams fungibility and ability to quickly pivot during this stage to find a PMF (Product Market Fit) while they master the MVP (Minimal Viable Product).
For Startups which are romping up capital for growth with Series A/B should focus as much about execution as it is about technological advancements so the following two factors of operational excellence and ability to execute by the founders (their past performance of solving problems at scale) matter the most.
For Late stage startups, it’s about Digitizing and Monetising the business, use the traction to spread global reach and incubate key partnerships.
Finally, Execution Always Triumphs the Idea. So, the core to investing will be in teams who have unparalleled GRIT and Perseverance to Execute and Win!!
Arindam Mukhopadhyay: Yes, there are few challenges that supply chain startups can address to become more attractive for VC and PE investments…
The supply chain industry is highly fragmented, with many small players operating in different segments of the value chain. This can make it difficult for startups to gain scale and achieve economies of scale, therefore startups should focus on building a strong value proposition.
Building a supply chain infrastructure requires significant capital investment, which can be a barrier for startups. VCs and PEs are often hesitant to invest in startups that require large capital investments, especially if they are unproven in the market.
Startups need to adopt emerging technologies that are available today to be able to differentiate themselves by offering innovative supply chain solutions that can improve efficiency and reduce costs.
What are the evaluation criteria for investors for selecting the right company?
Pramod Gupta: The specifics may vary, but focus on fundamentals is true of any startup, irrespective of the sector. The most important aspect that we look for before making a start-up investment is the founding team and are they able to offer investors a comforting vibe. While obviously having a sector understanding or prior experience is a great plus, I have personally taken bets on people who have no prior understanding or exposure to the sector. In terms of specifics of what people look at in terms of quality of the founder(s) is their transparency, depth of problem understanding, work done to create a business model, their resilience, and the ability to pivot as and when needed. Are they open to feedback? Do they give you a sense of high integrity? And while having more than one founder gives us comfort, I have invested in single-founder start-ups too. If there are indeed more than one founders, it’s important to understand their vibes with each other, clarity of role split and how do they complement each other.
Once the ‘Founder’ box gets ticked, we move to other aspects such as the problem they are trying to solve, is it significant enough? Is there a Product Market Fit? How is their GTM (Go-To-Market)? Are they capable enough to manage the scale-up and implement processes as they scale? Do they know their customers end requirements well? Have they got the supply-side and customer acquisition piece thought through. What progress have they made in putting partnerships in place, where needed. As a startup investor, while I don’t look for perfect answers to all of the above, but broadly one needs to get a sense that either these are in place, or the team is capable of finding answers along the way. Lot of it is data, but at times, it is more of conversations and gut feel.
Coming specifically to supply chain startups, supply chain is an execution heavy field, and hence it’s important to understand whether startup team has in it, to get down to trenches and execute deeply? The other thing especially true of supply chain is that there are a lot of procedural and compliance requirements and unlike pure tech services, finance plays a much larger role in supply chain. Therefore, I personally put immense emphasis on their ability to work with the finance and supply chain of their customers or even suppliers. In short, the real magic happens when tech excellence meets operational excellence, and it's truer in supply chain than in many other sectors.
Ankit Sethi: Investments in supply chain startups typically follow the same process as investments in other sectors. However, there are certain peculiarities. Firstly, supply chains can be strongly influenced by macro factors and developments in other sectors, and therefore investors need to have a forward-looking lens on deciding the trends that they want to back. Second, the supply chain is broad with multiple verticals and sub verticals embedded, each with their own specific nuances and potential for innovation requiring consideration by investors.
From a personal perspective, I look for companies which are working towards an exponential change as incrementality may not be sufficient and would eventually get displaced in this sector.
Akhil Srivastava: To me, these seven are the key criteria for making an investment: Idea; Founder; Team; Product Market Fit; Clients/Customers or the Target Market; Scalability; and Competitive landscape.
Besides, there are several stages that investors weigh these key criteria for:
For Pre Seed Stage: Idea and Founder matter the most.
For Series A/B Stage: Team, Product Market Fit, Current Clients / Customers are the most important factors.
For Late stage Startup: Scalability and Competitive landscape are high on the agenda of investors.
A due diligence should ensure reviewing startup’s competitive strategy and identify which inputs are most essential for the new supply chain business. Consider inputs beyond the scope of traditional supply chains, such as skills and IP. For example, identify the owners of software essential to operations. Then, identify how the supply chain supports the maintenance of these critical inputs and which geographies are involved. Go as far back in the supply chain startups as possible to gain a detailed understanding of where these inputs originate and how exposed client’s company really is to disruptions across the globe.
Arindam Mukhopadhyay: We, at India Accelerator, use the following evaluation criteria to select the right supply chain startups:
Founder: We evaluate whether the founder has right experience needed to execute on the business plan, this includes looking at the founder's track record, technical and industry experience, and ability to build a strong team.
Business Model: We determine whether the startup has a large addressable market and a clear path to growth, this includes looking at the attractiveness of industry, market size, revenue streams, pricing strategy, cost structure and competition.
Traction: We ensure the startup has proven product-market fit with existing customers who are willing to pay for the product or service and can get new customers efficiently.
Technology and Innovation: We look for startups that are leveraging technology and innovation to create new and differentiated solutions in the supply chain domain, which gives them a significant advantage over the competitors.
What would be your advice to these companies to sustain their growth momentum and be successful in the long run?
Pramod Gupta: Even though startups often attract investors on the strength of their business ideas, unit economics must make sense right from the start. So, in parallel with working on product market fit and GTM, founders need to double down on unit economics.
Number two, especially in today's funding environment, startups must have their runway planned out. We have seen that a lot of startups end up chasing vanity revenue where they would either discount significantly or give away too much for free or go overboard on marketing expenditure. There are some startups who have exhausted virtually their entire funding on IPL advertising. I firmly believe that all these things don’t help. Every startup must keep a hawk’s eye on the runway and growth with profitability. And where needed, investors need to guide – or even step in – to ensure that happens.
Then in terms of execution, startups must strike a fine balance between tech, strategy and execution so that they are able to implement their ultimate vision. The most important thing during black swan events is the agility of the team. How open are they to inputs? Are they ready to act to pivot the business or change the revenue models as per the evolving scenario? Like everything else in life, the ones who are more agile and open to inputs do better than those who are highly capable but rigid. Startups should also look out for having a set of mentors and advisors or experts who are invested in them and who are happy to spend time helping them guide through scale up as well as in handling various eventualities. There are enough and more very experienced people who want to help startups; and it doesn't necessarily need to be a commercial relationship. I am myself working with a few startups to help them scale, grow or even pivot where needed.
I would like to mention two of my investee startups that got impacted by COVID, but they not only survived, but they also continue to thrive. Today they have a growing business and are in the process of raising much larger rounds. The first one is Intugine, a leading realtime multimodal supply chain visibility platform. One can imagine when a company’s major goal is enhancing visibility in the supply-chain world, how would happen to their business during COVID; if there is no movement, there is no need for visibility. Obviously, they got impacted as deeply as one could imagine, but they survived. They managed it through a prudent use of funds, and they used the Covid period to take care of a lot of developmental backlogs since there was no day-to-day operational pressure coming in from the customer’s side. They made effective use of that period for deep enhancements and improvements on the product side and then as soon as COVID started easing, they reached out to their existing customers and delighted them with the outcomes. They expanded their offering to existing customers, and taking references from the existing customers, they've managed to go to newer customers. They also used this time to create offering that have enabled them to move beyond India and also get into ocean freight visibility for international trade.
Another interesting story is about Syook – a SaaS based Real-Time-Location platform for business process automation of enterprises, helping them track assets, and enhance safety and compliance. During Covid when the factories were shut down for a long periods of time or were partially operational, they pivoted their stance and even started helping the government in contact tracing. While it was not a high revenue generator for them, it really helped them work through their product because besides being gainfully employed for a larger purpose, they could add dimensions to their product around dealing with movement (from earlier situation of handling mostly stationary situations). They now have a diversified set of offerings across multiple use cases, especially those involving significant compliance and safety matters, like pharmaceuticals and offshore drilling.
Ankit Sethi: In a sector such as supply chain, collaboration with stakeholders is key to push innovation and bring in new ways of working. I would encourage the startups to work with the larger ecosystem as much as possible. This is even more important in the critical areas of digitalization and decarbonization of supply chains. Be close to your customers and stay abreast of their evolving needs.
Have a razor-sharp focus on value proposition and business fundamentals. And think of step changes in your areas of focus.
Akhil Srivastava: Porter's Five Forces – Threat of new entrants, Bargaining power of buyers, Bargaining power of suppliers, Threat of new substitutes, and Competitive rivalry; are a MUST to keep a tab on marching ahead and continue to thrive.
The other prime factor will be government policies emphasizing self reliance and building ‘independent and controllable’ technology capabilities, which have increased significantly since the pandemic. Supply chains will lead construction of a ‘new whole-of-nation’ system for science and technology innovation, to face heightened odds in the world. Thus, each country/ government is working to build reliable supply chains locally, offering both an extensive opportunity for startups along with alleviating the risks of going global.
When shifting supply chains from one country to another, other considerations need to be made. Goods are not the only flows that face disruption. Capital, people, and data flows also face new challenges in the decoupling scenario between world powers. The new country’s regulatory environment, tax code, environmental considerations, workforce skillsets, availability of finance, and infrastructure — all need to be thoroughly analysed when evaluating the benefits and costs of such a move.
For example, reducing geopolitical risks by moving production to a new country may come with the benefits of lower labor costs and fewer taxes, but lurking political risks and environmental, social, and governance-related liabilities are issues that should not be overlooked instead keenly evaluated for scaling of businesses.
Arindam Mukhopadhyay: Following are some of the rules that startups can imbibe to tide past eventualities and uncertainties in the future:
Focus on strategy and the business model, it should be ready to scale which means growing exponentially.
Stay customer-centric to deliver unfulfilled demand of the customers by continuously gathering feedback and use it to improve products and services.
Achieve a proven product-market fit by analyzing the market, target audience and competitive landscape.
Build a strong team and an organization structure that is agile and allows for scaling.
Create an efficient way to generate revenue and cash flow from the business and manage expenses.
Finally, be adaptable and resilient, expect challenges and setbacks along the way, but learn from failures and pivot quickly to grow and improve.
How do you project the growth of Indian supply chain segment in the future and what crucial role are startups poised to play in this journey?
Pramod Gupta: We have just started. Supply chain growth is closely linked with manufacturing. If you look at the last 2-3 decades, very large part of India’s growth has actually come from services. We are just entering the manufacturing era now. And as we enter the manufacturing era, the role of supply chain can't be emphasized enough. Then the reform measures we spoke about earlier, such as Gati Shakti, port investments, the railways investment, logistics parks, digital India movement, National Logistics Policy, etc., are only accentuating the pace of supply chain growth and accrued investments.
And as I said earlier, while there are large problems to be solved or significant opportunities to be leveraged, startups are uniquely placed to lead the innovation race. Let a thousand flowers bloom. I am personally truly excited about the potential that supply chain holds in times to come, and especially about the role that startups can play in it.
Ankit Sethi: India has a growing middle class with rising urbanization and incomes resulting in one of the largest and fastest growing consumer base globally. On the other hand, the Indian government is strongly encouraging manufacturing and investing heavily in the country’s infrastructure. Supply chain would be the pillar on which these macro trends would sustain, and this would create strong tailwinds for startups in the sector resulting in one of the largest opportunities available globally. I believe startups would play a pivotal role in shaping the future of supply chain in India.
Akhil Srivastava: Startups working on profitable scalability with technological advancements and culture to embrace changing environment would be the beacon of light for building Resilient and Agile supply chains, which would enable Indian corporates gain both competitive advantage and outreach to end consumers.
Arindam Mukhopadhyay: The Indian supply chain sector is poised for strong growth in the near future, driven by various factors such as government initiatives, increasing investment in infrastructure, rising consumer demand, and the growth of e-commerce.
Startups are poised to play a crucial role in this journey, as they are well positioned to drive innovation as well as disruption in the supply chain domain. Following are the areas where startups are leveraging technology to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and provide better services to customers…
Last-mile delivery: This is a critical area for e-commerce companies, and startups can leverage technology and innovation to improve the efficiency of this process.
Warehousing and fulfilment: These are critical components of the supply chain, and startups can provide innovative solutions such as automation and robotics.
Supply chain visibility: This is becoming increasingly important for customers, and startups can create innovative solutions to improve visibility and transparency in the supply chain.
Logistics: Aggregation platforms can help small and medium-sized businesses access logistics services at a lower cost, and startups can provide innovative solutions in this space.
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