Spoton, an express services logistics provider, began its journey in early 2012. Since then, modifying upon their inherited legacy from TNT India, Spoton has surged ahead in redefining the services by adopting many a futuristic and strong step. With the help of India Equity Partners, a private equity firm, in 2012 and by investment from Samara Capital in 2018, Spoton prides itself on being an accurate and a consistent service delivery company.
Mr. Abhik Mitra, MD, Spoton Logistics, shares: “We started this company with a turnover of about Rs. 180 crores and over the last three years, we have been growing at more than 25 per cent year-on-year. In 2018-19, we grew at 29 per cent over the previous year. By this financial year end, we will cross Rs. 650 crores. We believe that we can grow at even more than 25 per cent year on year for the next four to five years, which will be far higher compared to the industry growth rate because industry is growing at about 14-15 per cent after GST implementation.”
Multiple Sectors – Far Reaching Network
Spoton Logistics boasts of a pan-India network covering more than 230 locations and over 20,000 pin codes. With 13 major depots and 29 transit hubs, Spoton offers services to a wide range of sectors, namely, automotive, engineering, pharmaceutical, electronics and electrical segments besides lifestyle and retail.
Mr. Mitra says: “For us, the automotive vertical is about 10 per cent of our total revenue. It is so because some of our other verticals have grown faster. In automotive, we deal mainly with spare parts and the aftermarket. We typically will take spare parts and ferry them to the distributor of a company. Some are from component manufacturers to major OEMs too. That will be about four or five per cent of our total operation.” Yet Mr. Mitra feels there is much more that can be done in these sectors.
One major strength of Spoton is to offer transport solutions that are run on global standards of integrity and ethics. And that is why the company prides itself on leading a successful and rewarding journey since coming into existence.
Mr. Mitra shares: “Logistics is an industry where integrity does not necessarily rank high. Hence, we are building a company that is creating a niche category of its own – that which is neither an MNC nor a promoter-run company; instead is a professionally-run company. We are supported by an external financial sponsor with whose backing we create our own culture. Since our inception till date it has only been about creating our own culture. We strongly believe that it is the culture that ultimately runs companies. And our culture is made up of being responsive to our customers. Apart from that, we are data-driven, we are technology and engineering intensive and that is why we deliver results because we have our intense focus on operations.”
But a journey never stops. In logistics business, it is ideas that pump in new energy into it and improving the systems on the go.
Mr. Mitra adds: “We believe that it is important to develop the ability to say no that improves an entity’s professional efficiency. We may do more or we may do less, but we do them well to the best of our abilities. That particular philosophy has stood us in good stead.”
Milking Technology – An Advantage
As part of their continuous innovations, Spoton has introduced an initiative called piece-level tracking where every box bears a barcode. Mr. Mitra explains: “Every time the box travels from the point of origin to its destination, it gets scanned at every port and the box is identified and finds a place. This allows for the integrity of the shipment to be maintained across the network. And this is one of the tangible examples of what we have done in terms of technology.”
According to him, Artificial Intelligence has a huge role to play in logistics business. He adds: “AI can be used for different solutions across different parameters. Route planning is one area. If there are say 20 locations to deliver to and 40 to pick up from, the route planning is done in the driver’s head using a roadmap. I would say based on the data, the route can be planned for each day of the week. The data shows past patterns of consignment delivery and we can introduce real time planning as per the delivery situation to it. For example, if a customer is not ready to take delivery, then the delivery plan can be modified use data. It means we are no longer dependent solely on human being’s abilities. Working with data allows companies to figure out traffic en route, customer readiness to take deliveries and how many locations are to be touched in a day. AI can even figure out if a customer is unhappy with the services and pre-warn the customer service executive who can then track and solve the problem of that particular customer. I feel it is a huge positive if technology can be used to make human work simpler.”
Progressive Thinking
Industry slowdown is taking on a realistic hue with many business houses – those using the services of logistics providers – lamenting slump in shipments by almost 30-40 per cent. Yet Mr. Mitra says: “The express logistics industry will grow almost double the GDP. Over the last couple of years, it has been growing at about 14-15 per cent instead of about 16-18 per cent. But I think the benefits of GST are still to be realized fully. Prior to GST, most of our customers had, on an average, about 30 warehouses across India but that has now shrunk to about 15 or 20 numbers. And that is good for the express logistics industry. The reason being, it works around – a) high value, b) points of distribution and, c) reliability and speed – all of which contribute to consistency in delivery.” And such consistency in delivery leads to proper pre-planning of the supply chain.
It is heartening to see that the logistics industry, including the express logistics segment, is slowly but surely moving towards ‘targeted marketing’ driven by innovations.
Mr. Mitra opines: “Targeted marketing, hitherto, is unknown in the logistics industry. So we are trying to learn from other industries and bring them into logistics. Technology will be one big driver of that. In fact, the people who deal with logistics are far more tech-savvy today than earlier. This, in turn, is increasing the customer expectations from us.”
And this triggers higher efficiency in the delivery service providers at end points to work with higher levels of speed and accuracy than before. And that is why Spoton like companies have grown tremendously, bringing in professionalism.
In a nutshell, according to Mr. Mitra, it is not only the technology but also the customer behaviour which has changed, triggering an overall progressive thinking.
Spoton is exploring offering 3PL as a vertical. Along with it, the company is taking a keen interest in increasing their business in the automotive space too.
It is something that may happen sooner than later.