We hosted the best supply chain brains under one roof, here is what they had to say

Locus recently organized the first Supply Chain Meetup in India in collaboration with The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation. The event was hosted in Bangalore, with the best minds of supply chain from various industries joining the event.

With the top leaders of the logistics under one roof, the discussion was lively, and the group discussed the latest challenges, trends and practices of the industry. Here are some of the excerpts from the event:

Nishith Rastogi, Founder and CEO, Locus started the conversation and talked about the changes in the industry he has seen in the last few years. He added, “Every industry has a decade or two of rapid innovation, right now, that period is for logistics.”

Brian Aoaeh, Founder, The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation briefed the crowd about the importance of supply chain communities to create value and use of innovation and technology in the logistics sector.

GowriShankar Paramasivam, Startup Accelerator, Sourcing lead, Maersk explained how he sees traditional big players ‘shaking hands’ with tech startups for using their expertise in technology. He also discussed geocoding not only in the x and y but also in the z coordinate to ensure better accuracy as cities become denser.

Krishna Khandelwal, CBO, Locus shared his experience with the FMCG companies and stated that- ”Logistics has shifted from being the cost centre to one of the biggest differentiating factors for companies.”

Abhishek Nandy, Director, Flipkart discussed the challenges of the e-commerce sector and shared his views on how last mile deliveries can make or break a company’s reputation.  According to him, “Even one customer not getting his order impacts the brand image of a company, every single order has become a supply chain problem now.”

Anantharam S, Head- Commercial and Logistics, TATA Coffee discussed the challenges of the exporters. The main problems include the availability of the shipments on time and optimum management of inventory.

Ramesh Venkat, Head- Industry Partnership, Logistics Skill Sector Council apprised the group of how different factors have different priorities in various parts of the world. He gave the example of labour charges, which are much higher in the western world and thus, the amount of time a human resource is used becomes a key component in supply chain planning. He also talked about the importance of having a ‘symbiotic partnership’ of stakeholders and demanded supply chain functions to not work in silos.

Chiranjeevi K, Team leader- Supply chain, National key accounts, Coca-Cola said that capturing every mom and pop store is a challenge for even the biggest of the players. It is difficult to deliver low volume products to far-flung areas, as lower volume of shipments means higher logistics costs.

Vandana R, Senior Accelerator Program Manager, Target and Nayani Nasa, Senior Manager, Global Strategy and Innovation and Lead, Target talked about using every ‘node’ of the supply chain for last-mile delivery and how the customer is at the core of every business decision in today’s world. She said that the ‘legacy companies’ are open to working with startups and even have their acceleration programs. However, to work with any legacy brand, the integration has to be top management driven. The duo also demanded that startups too should incorporate the requirements of the traditional corporate companies in order to work in a collaboration.

Surya Kannoth, Assistant Editor, STAT Media argued that the importance of the incentives of the last-mile delivery executive. She believes that the delivery guys are the face of a company and therefore they should be rewarded and upskilled the most.

Chengappa IS, Customer Logistics Head, HMD global talked about the need of companies to go ‘direct to the consumers’, he discussed how companies are now trying to understand the ‘customer journey’ are trying to involve more CRM in their online store.

Deepak R, Co-founder at Shoptree and Mithun Manjunath, Product and Business, Shoptree raised their concerns about tech companies deploying modern logistics solutions without understanding them.

The Bangalore Supply Chain Meetup was a true amalgamation of logistics ideas from various walks of life. Want to be a part of similar meetups? Join our community:

To know more about Locus, visit our website.