Winners Are Us - Under-40 Celerity Supply Chain Tribe Super Achievers 2023

Entering its glorious 5th year, Celerity Supply Chain Tribe Awards event is being hailed as the industry’s most coveted congregation, which not only recognizes and honours young supply chain super stars and super achievers and offers them a poised platform for growth, over the years, it has also become a proven landmark where innovative practices and success stories are celebrated and accredited by industry leaders. Competing with the best in class, this year’s Jury vetted awards have pushed the BAR even HIGHER with every nomination being worthy of achieving recognition. As the supply chain domain is charting the most important course in its growth trajectory in the country with a slew of government measures ably backing the momentum, it’s only pertinent that we select the most outstanding LOGISTICIANS who are READY to take this growth trajectory upwards.

Ed's Note: To read the achievements of the Celerity Under-30 Supply Chain Super Stars, click here

Here’s presenting a glimpse of the innovations and achievements by the supply chain talent in the age group of 31 - 40 years, which have helped them earn the most credible accolade…

The Celerity 40-Under-40 Supply Chain Super Achievers 2023

Aswini Thota, Data Scientist V, Bose Corporation 

I oversee the development of new product introduction (NPI) forecasting, which plays a crucial role in assisting Bose in accurately predicting the sell-through demand for upcoming products. The global supply chain function has faced challenges due to recent pandemic-related disruptions, resulting in shortages of electronic chips and components. These disruptions emphasize the importance of precise planning and timely manufacturing to meet customer demands. While Bose has traditionally utilized basic modelling approaches for forecasting new product demand, there have been instances where the overall demand for a new product was not accurately predicted, leading to significant forecast errors.

Enhancing the accuracy of NPI forecasting is paramount to avoid adverse outcomes such as excessive inventory or missed revenue opportunities. To address this, I am leading a project focused on creating a highly accurate and scalable demand-sensing framework for Bose products prior to their launch. This project involves collaboration with key stakeholders, including the manufacturing, supply chain, and sales teams. The model employed in this project generates probabilistic outputs, enabling the business to assess the associated risks across various forecast levels. Our recent forecasts for a newly launched product have showcased a substantial improvement compared to our previous benchmark, highlighting the progress made in enhancing forecast accuracy. The ability to generate accurate NPI forecasts also carries significant financial implications, representing a valuable opportunity when fully implemented.

Atul Bhardwaj, Deputy General Manager - Strategic Sourcing and New Product Development, Escorts Kubota India Pvt Ltd

I have been working on various areas like Strategic Sourcing, Supply Chain, New Product Development, Pricing from last 16 years with several automotive industries like Tafe Motor & Tractor Ltd, Ashok Leyland Ltd, Escorts Kubota. Presently I am heading Casting, Forging and Sheet Metal Domain in Escorts Kubota and set-up complete purchasing strategies & processes since the beginning when Kubota Corporation came up with Escorts Ltd in 2019. While leading the team, I successfully launched three domestic and two global projects and established complete procurement systems and policies.

Even after Covid-2019 challenges, I kept the team motivated and managed the supplier relationship to ensure timely implementation of projects. While handling more than ?10 Billion spend, we were able to achieve 21% cost saving wrt. to BOM value in 2020. Moreover, supplier capacity ramped-up up to 115 tractors per month production. While in Ashok Leyland, I led Sourcing and Supply chain - forging team and representing sourcing team during Deming Award Journey in 2016. I was able to set up green supply chain under environment-friendly packing implementation throughout the organization.

During localization exercise, I established a new supplier base near Pantnagar plant & achieved more than 80% part localization by volume, also outsourced timing gears and ramped up production of engine sets up to 8000. I have led the team during BS4 implementation, ensured timely development, and supply ramp-up to meet business plans.

During the jorney so far, I was involved in setting up two greenfield projects and designing complete purchasing systems and procurement policies aligning with organizational goals. Apart from procurement, I helped in developing quality systems using the TQM approach and implemented not only within the company but also at the supplier’s end.

Ankit Shukla, Manager – Asset Productivity & Control, CHEP India

This year we started getting major hit due to automotive damages. We took this up as a strategic project to add value to the business. The task at hand is to reduce the overall damages. We did Strapping Implementation in over 100+ sites, leveraged past efforts of MOQ Implementation for better network optimization. We initiated an awareness drive for enhanced industry behavior change. These efforts resulted in reduced transit damages; better loadability and possibility of counting accurately; uniform load; bundling as per equipment category; safe unloading at SC; reduced TAT for vehicle both at OEM and at SC (during unloading); reduced labour cost for unloading at SC. With rigorous efforts of team across OEMs, we were able to reduce unloading and loading times as well as transit damages. The project was appreciated by the supply chain team and this also enabled us to implement dehire discrepancy process as one of the key requirements was to offer material to driver in a countable manner such that the ‘transfer of ownership’ can be completed. This process made us realize that we do not have to innovate every time, being simple (like implementing strapping solution at a minimal cost) is OK, leveraging present resources is ideal (like available literature used for industry retraining), MOQ implementation work done in the past proved the right stepping stone to deliver an awesome project.

Ankit Sethi, COO – ASEAN, Fung Investments

Ankit has been a corporate development and investment professional in the supply chain industry for 12+ years and has worked across multiple geographies including India, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. As a corporate development professional, Ankit has helped scale businesses by implementing organic and inorganic strategies. As an early-stage/growth investor, he has invested in innovative supply chain business in India and SE Asia and has helped these businesses with their product-market-fit, go-to-market, operational and fund raising strategies. Ankit has a unique experience of working within supply chain business implementing operational strategies and also investing in companies and driving them strategically. Ankit is also a well-regarded angel investor and advisor to startups in India and SE Asia.

Chandramani Behera, Senior General Manager - Transportation, Snowman Logistics Ltd.

As the head of transportation at Snowman Logistics in FY 2018-19, the revenue was approximately Rs75 crore. Since then, we have made significant progress. In fact, during FY 22-23, we achieved a revenue of Rs125 crore, which is a considerable accomplishment for our team. To achieve this growth, one of the primary things we did was to focus on improving our yield per kilometer. We accomplished this by bringing on new customers and expanding into new segments. As a result, we were able to increase our revenue year after year. In addition to revenue growth, we also took steps to control our costs. This involved a careful evaluation of all the related expenses, such as fuel, route expenses, and repair and maintenance costs. This helped us increase our EBITDA year after year. We also prioritized vehicle maintenance, resulting in high uptime and better revenue per vehicle. This, combined with our revenue and cost control strategies, led to our team being awarded by our leadership team as the best growing vertical.

Kartik Jalan, Founder & CEO, Indicold Pvt. Ltd.

As I embarked on this exciting journey, I realized that the Indian cold chain industry is grappling with fragmentation of supply, compromised locations and absence of standardization of processes. Our interactions with customers highlighted that the customer experience was very poor and basic hygiene expectations of temperature were heavily compromised and a distant reality. Existing cold chain infrastructures were under and inefficiently utilized, and customers struggle with limited access to world class infrastructure.

At this point, our deep understanding, experience and knowledge about the intricacies of the cold chain industry of India has served as a clear vision for developing in-house proprietary powerful tech solutions. Our future-ready tech tools handhold our customers at every step, on one hand, while on the other, offer complete transparency and trackability at any given time and maintaining the requisite temperature across the chain.

At Indicold, we have adopted a holistic approach to demand and supply and the goal is to provide service at par with global standards. We are solving this problem by organizing the fragmented cold chain infrastructure and providing a seamless one stop demand and supply-side experience and service. It makes inventory discoverable and usable, while providing a standardized and trusted experience to cold chain customers. The outcome is clearly an enriched customer experience backed by standardized SOPs and intelligent & innovative tech solutions ensuring efficacy, cost efficacy and peace of mind. At Indicold, our endeavour is to democratize the cold chain by leveraging new data points to pinpoint and fix supply chain hiccups, maintain the integrity and safety of infrastructure, and improve predictability and reliability with end-to-end visibility.

Karthikeyan Subramanian, Senior Director – Consulting, GEP

With more than a decade in a market-leading procurement and supply chain consulting firm, I have been part of several innovations that have impacted the way businesses across the globe operate. The aftermath of Covid-19 saw businesses grappling with new challenges. Among these, managing cash flows, reducing discretionary spend, and maintaining operating margins became paramount. A global leader in the manufacturing industry approached GEP seeking assistance in modernizing its procurement function to tackle these challenges.

I found myself tasked with the transformation of an extensively decentralized procurement organization, spanning 50+ sites with 20+ distinct ERP systems, into a more centralized and efficient entity. Besides, the client was keen on leveraging technology (AI/ML) for digitalizing Source-to-Pay (S2P) processes to improve efficiency, drive policy compliance, improve reporting and analytics, reduce risks, etc.

I spearheaded a team to conceptualize a digital procurement transformation program. We aimed at a digital approach, encouraging collaboration and strategic cost management. Our solution also involved designing and implementing an efficient, center-led organizational structure, introducing Centers of Excellence for different elements of procurement such as contract management and e-sourcing.

We recognized that technology would be a critical enabler for this transformation. Hence, we implemented the GEP SMART technology platform to serve as a unified backbone for all procurement tasks. We also redesigned the S2P process flows to ensure full integration with the new technology platform, boosting automation in the process.

The key activities included setting up multiple spend control towers to track purchases and spending, developing an integrated dashboard for visibility into real-time consumption data, and establishing processes for procurement to intercept and challenge bad costs. We also set up war rooms with the C-suite for quick responses.

This streamlining and digitalizing S2C process became the driving engine for Procurement and Finance to collaborate closely providing real-time visibility of the costs. Improved expenditure planning through a closed-loop approach and periodic governance enabled leadership to take quick actions.

The results were compelling: the client saw $100 - $120 million in P&L savings over the last couple of years and a 60-65% boost in Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) transaction processing productivity. These strategic changes helped the client manage costs systematically, thus facing the crisis more effectively than its competitors.

Megha Kaushik, GM (Head – Supply Chain Finance), Patanjali Foods Ltd.

I introduced tailored supply chain finance solutions in the organization by making a paradigm shift from conventional CC funded payments to buyer-led supply chain finance techniques. On Payables side, I introduced TReDs (for MSMEs) and Vendor Financing. Both these SCF solutions helped us in optimizing working capital by increasing our DPO. To delve further, we introduced Dynamic discounting vide early payment solution, for our suppliers which helped us in reducing our COGS and maximizing our return by having an APR of more than 12% PA. On the other hand, Vendor financing helped our suppliers to obtain finance at much lower rates based on our credit standing and Brand Image. The payable management solutions helped in three most vital ways: ensured timely payments to vendors, even early; helped Vertical heads to maintain the supply chain without any interruptions/hindrance and extended credit period of 90 days, at a low rate of around 7 – 7.5 % (on an average).

Simultaneously, on the Receivables side, we introduced Inventory funding to our distributors, which resulted into immediate access to cash without navigating through issues or dealing with long waits that are generally associated with realization of receivables from customers, thus, improving sales coverage with reduction in DSOs. To add further, it benefited our channel partners too as they would be getting part of the working capital at much lower rates than their existing limits through extension of DPO.

For Payable management, we journeyed with the help of our technology partners who not only provided us the platform for static as well as dynamic discounting but also got the entire family of transactions completely automated and amalgamated with ERP, using T-codes, in such a way that not only it eliminated all manual legs but also increased the efficiency and productivity of the employees, thereby restructuring and strengthening the payment wings of the group. For Receivables Management, we entered into tie-up with finance providers under channel financing for the distributors of Patanjali group. We moved a step further from the conventional mode of invoice discounting to the raising of draw down request by distributor; which is backed by a PO, and is completely automized. The partnership resulted into immediate access to cash without navigating through issues or dealing with long waits that are generally associated with realization of receivables from customers. For DSS, we partnered with Tableau for the entire data fetching, construction of dashboards, designing of graphics, presentation of data story board, maintenance, to name a few. Considering the gravity of data, the solution we opted was on-premises.

Jivraj Papdiwal, Head – Logistics, Warehousing and Customer Service, Marico Ltd. 

We have created an entire framework for improving last node availability for organized trade customers. In this framework, we have integrated the stock levels of key customers to understand out-of-stock (OOS) instances for Marico products. We have created end-to-end loss tree for understanding the root cause of these OOS instances. Daily OOS alerts have also been created basis the OOS loss tree for carrying out sharp action as a next step. This project has led to significant improvement in last node stock availability for key organized trade customers and has started contributing to increasing the topline for organization. 

Raja Kumar, Manager - Parts & Accessory Warehouse Operations, Maruti Suzuki 

Looking back on my 10 years of professional life, there were many significant innovations & breakthroughs that enabled me to advance in my career and contribute to organization’s success. I have been instrumental in leading various process improvement and automation projects. While working in the warehouse domain, my focus had always been on effort reduction while keeping operator’s comfort in my mind. These are the recent innovations executed by me:

Direct Dispatch of Vendor Parts to RPDCs (Regional Parts Distribution Centres): There was a projected contribution of 5600+ trucks (inflow and outflow) due to internal material transfer of fast moving parts from Mother warehouse to RPDCs. A new warehouse was required to accommodate the growth of business. But I along with other key stockholders had introduced the concept of direct dispatches of Spare parts and accessories from suppliers to RPDCs (Regional Parts Distribution Centre) and eliminating the transfer of material from Mother Warehouse. Now there is no need for binning, storage and picking of parts at Mother Warehouse. We achieved the growth of 20% from same warehouse without increasing resources.

Designing Automatic Packing Machine: ED (Electro Deposit) Coated parts were being packed manually and peak capacity of packing was 6000 Parts in a day. There was a requirement of innovation to increase capacity to accommodate organic growth. I have designed and implemented an Auto Packing Machine to 4X the packing capacity. Now, we have a capacity to pack 24000 parts in a day.

Behaviour based Training through world renowned concepts (Ikigai, Success Journey, Comfort Zone etc) in local language: To sustain productivity, it is important that a team remains motivated. What better than having motivational messages visible to all employees throughout their work duration? Giving shape to this thought, I had designed large size wall murals (6 metres by 6 metres), which serves as the constant source of motivation for the whole team. These murals showcase facets of well known topics like “Tree of Life”, “Success Journey”, “Ikigai”, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, “Circle of Concern/Circle of Influence”, and “Power of Teamwork”. All Murals have the content written in Hindi for better understanding and effectiveness. Behaviour based Trainings are being imparted to Warehouse Manpower with the help of these Murals.

Neha Singh, VP – Global Supply planning Transformation, Project Voyager, Diageo

Innovation life cycle management is a big challenge for every organization especially considering the cross functional movement of data and processes. With support of a 3P software development company and inputs from teams across the company developed and launched the Mantra tool. The tool could manage Volume projection approvals for new products; track every step of master data creation with auto triggers to stakeholders; Track the stock distribution at warehouse level vs the buildup plans and order movements and track the success of project against the launch plans. The tool revolutionized how the projects were tracked and brought every department together. It led to an 80% drop in master data creation timelines for projects and easier one click communication to every stakeholder in the organization to review the status of any projects, projects density across time/across brands or across vendors. Tool helped to create a data repository for multiple kind of data analysis.

Nitin Sharma, Chief Operating Officer, Samvardhana Motherson Hamakyorex Engineered Logistics Limited (SAMRX)

There are two main innovations which I led for my current organization which not only helped to optimize the direct cost but also ensure that the drivers’ skill set is improved, and new skilled drivers are created while retaining the old drivers. First innovation was to automate the entire process with the help of Dedicated Control Tower, which is integrated with the fuel sensors, GPS and other devices and Apps, which gives us the real-time 360-degree visibility of fleet and drivers’ performance, helping us to keep the direct cost in control. The entire industry is working on fixed mileage (fuel allowance) with the drivers where the driver is responsible to deliver the cargo and take his salary by saving & stealing fuel. In SAMRX, fuel is monitored by fuel sensors and the driver is paid fixed salary and incentive based on his performance. Cases where drivers used to not earn due to no business have stopped and drivers are working as more responsible and professional employees. They also have a long-term commitment to the organization and job security, which results in a very low attrition rate and reduces the burden of recruitment. The second innovation is the Dedicated Driver App where the driver gets his attendance marked automatically and responsible to achieve his duty and other targets by inputting the information from load to delivery. The Driver App ensures monitoring of driver performance and completion of key tasks paperless through the driver app (Physical hard copies of Inspection checklists are devised in the driver App itself). We have even automated the submission of the POD (proof of delivery) through this App and now the driver can take and upload the copy of the POD through this App along with submission of his enroute expense receipts for payment. This resulted in faster sharing of data, timely payment to the drivers and huge savings for the company by ensuring proper monitoring with green operations.

Nikhil Agarwal, President, CJ Darcl Logistics Ltd.

I am deeply honored and grateful for the recognition bestowed upon myself and my team. This remarkable achievement truly reflects our unwavering dedication, relentless pursuit of excellence, and countless hours of hard work invested in our endeavors. While this moment of triumph holds great significance, it is essential to acknowledge that success should not be measured solely by external factors. Genuine success lies in the impact we create on the value we bring to our industry, and the positive change we inspire in the lives of others.

As a recipient of this prestigious award, I am committed to utilizing this honor as a catalyst to inspire aspiring entrepreneurs and emerging leaders. I firmly believe in the power of sharing experiences and lessons learned to uplift others and guide them on their own paths to success. Through open dialogue, mentorship, and support, we can foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

The motivation derived from recognition has long been absent in our industry, and it is truly gratifying to witness the emergence of a platform that acknowledges our hard work. We require more young entrepreneurs to step forward and propel this industry to new heights. The supply chain industry is already witnessing significant changes, and we are well aware of its future trajectory. Younger, more astute individuals will be better equipped to adapt swiftly to this evolving landscape. Let us embrace this as a stepping-stone towards even greater achievements, knowing that our dedication and commitment will continue to propel us forward.

Shreyas Dhore, Manager (DGM), Supply Management Tools & Processes, John Deere India Pvt. Ltd.

In recent years, we were all challenged by major global disruptions, which led to lot of volatility and uncertainties across industry segments impacting supply chains of the world. It simply meant supply chain teams needed to be more resilient and offer flexibility to the business. This flexibility leads to lot of challenges with managing inventories in sync with business dynamics. I functioned as digital transformation catalyst and enabled several Analytics and Automation projects empowering supply chain professionals to take better, faster and information driven decisions. One such great success story is on Inventory Analytics. I catalyzed a team of business process champions and data scientists, which built multiple analytics models recommending inventory driving parameters. This has helped supply chain teams to migrate from gut feel based decision making to an algorithm-based decision making. Through adoption of these analytical tools, we were able to deliver significant reduction in safety inventory as well reduce operating inventory thereby improving asset performance and delivering bottom line savings through inventory carrying cost reduction.

Shivam Pandey, Head of Warehousing, Customer Service & Distribution, Good Glamm Group

During my previous stint with Dabur, I was monitoring annual freight budget of Rs220+ crores and ensuring availability of more than 2000 SKUs across all warehouses at lowest cost to serve and least time to market. We managed India & Nepal Supply network planning & demand fulfillment in order to have least freight cost from 30+ locations to 28 warehouses and delivered annual cost saving of Rs5 crore in transportation budget. We opted for a different strategy in ensuring these saving. Firstly, for juices dispatches, we introduced double decker truck to address the stack height and cost optimization in the same trip. This has increased the vehicle utilization and lowered down the freight cost by 1.5%. Secondly, we introduced multimodal transportation after identifying the lanes where the inward movement vis road is comparatively high, e.g. from North to Guwahati, truck freight is almost double from Guwahati to North so started supply from North Guwahati via Train and this has lowered the cost by 3% for servicing the stocks to Guwahati based customers. 

Sayan Deb Kundu, Data Science Chapter Lead, Telstra

As a Data Science leader in Telstra, Sayan has been working in AI based Digital Transformation in Supply Chain domain. As a Senior Manager in Global Supply Chain in his previous company AB InBev, he also led large scale transformation programs. AB InBev had multiple geographical zones and there was no uniform ERP or processes across the zones. There were legacy systems tracking supply chain information with no control over data quality. There were no checks on the data and many a times there were wrong entries due to slip of pen. In most of the cases, the numbers didn’t tally, and it impacted the business review both at function level and at a zonal level. This led to delay in decisions and improper visibility within supply chain. Along with my team, we implemented One Source of Truth for the Supply Chain information using Integrated Business Planning solutions of Anaplan. Additionally, we augmented the solution with an AI-based anomaly detection capability, which provided checks based on historical and benchmarking on similar units, and this led to a decrease in error rate by 18%. Post implementation, we were able to provide better data and insights for critical business decisions. It helped detect some other windfall opportunities to Finance teams as well like identification of around $12M of Capex otherwise wrongly classified as Opex in ERP system resulting in potential EBITDA savings.

Varun Kakkar, GM – Supply Chain, Grasim Industries (Paints Division)

One of the key projects I worked on during my stint with Asian Paints as Manager – Distribution was Full Truck delivery Optimization project. With consistently changing market environment, plants constantly face requirement to focus on increasing SKU range per truck dispatched to improve service level and order fill rate. This leads to deterioration in the full pallet dispatch and increased the effort and manhours required for loading per truck. There was a need to make this process more seamless where market can be served better while keeping plant efficiency parameters in check.

I got the opportunity to lead this project. We worked on this critical project to ensure critical product reaches the market in the earliest possible vehicle once produced. We wanted to automate the process so that everyday plant dispatches don’t become more cumbersome while allowing for the system to automatically pick critical materials for dispatch while optimizing SKUs picked per truck to ensure plant KPIs are not impacted. Asian Paints has more than 100 depots, 30+ manufacturing locations and every day new production scenarios are emerging, hence the scope for this transaction was immense. A big cross-functional team including plant material and dispatch teams, Supply Chain, OPCs, Regional warehousing teams and internal and external IT teams were involved in taking this project to completion.

We worked on developing this new transaction ZDELOPT in SAP to use critical SKU information basis the stockout and low stock information from the depots. The transaction was fed plant constraints including maximum SKUs to be loaded per truck and possible partial pallet loading possible at each location as master data. Based on the master data fed system understood plant constraints to ensure every truck every day is optimized to add SKUs based on requirement and ensure all types of materials are loaded to ensure no damages while optimizing number of SKUs to ensure plant loading time is not increased.

We went for a phase wise launch for this newly designed transaction first at conventional plants with more flexibility to handle the changes and then over the course of the year launched across other locations and then for all the automated plants. Step by step launch was done over the course of one year to reach coverage across all Asian Paints plants and RDCs.

Once full scaleup was reached, the new Transaction was used across all Asian Paints plants and Regional Distribution Centers with more than 400 trucks per day being dispatched every day using the new transaction. This improved OFR from 94 to 96% due to better prioritization of critical SKUs while dispatching trucks from the warehousing while maintaining number of SKUs per truck for the plants to deliver a win for all propositions. Some locations witnessed up to 10% reduction in SKUs per truck due to a much more balanced truck load mix.