According to Vaishnav Shetty, a chief digital officer of the Mumbai-based logistics company Allcargo Logistics, the startup is willing to be acquired if it aligns with the company’s core business or the business of any of its subsidiaries. In an interview, Shetty said: “If there were an opportunistic play, that was one of a kind, then sure (we are open to acquiring). What Allcargo currently possesses is market leadership at every stage of the value chain, including Exim (export-import), container freight stations, warehousing, 3PL (third-party logistics), and the trucking sector. Therefore, any startup in the nation engaged in the supply chain segment is either central to or closely related to us. Additionally, we must work with startups if we are to truly be a firm of the future. Without disclosing the identities of those startups, he said that the company’s business accelerator has started working with 4 startups on various aspects of digitisation and will soon start working with 4 more.
Shetty, the son of Allcargo’s owner Shashi Kiran Shetty, began working for the company in 2016 as an administrative intern before transferring to ECU Worldwide, which is Allcargo’s major revenue generator abroad. Even before that, when he was just 13 years old, he would travel to Europe to attend conferences at ECU. Later, he returned to India to work for Allcargo’s real estate warehousing company, which it just sold to Blackstone. I had studied and attended college overseas for ten years, so that was very interesting, he said. “And as a member of this team, I gained a perspective on the entire spectrum. It was really intriguing, from the tehsildar level for paperwork to the offices of investment banks for talks. Shetty stated that the company had purchased several pieces of land to erect inland cargo facilities (ICDs). ICD was no longer a sound business proposition. The result was that it was essentially left unattended for five years, he continued. Shetty was a member of the team that signed contracts during these five years with potential customers ranging from Amazon to Decathlon. To get a business appraisal, the organisation would also present to several advisors, including real estate services company JLL. Later, he paid for the digitization of Allcargo. “We have tried and failed at this,” his father said as he handed him the procedure (digitisation). You must now carry it out!
Shetty’s work currently encompasses a variety of platforms, including data science, consumer applications, automation, and the startup environment. He and his team at ECU International created solutions that could be used in all of the company’s international markets from the top down. Shetty was a member of the team that signed contracts during these five years with potential customers ranging from Amazon to Decathlon. To get a business appraisal, the organisation would also present to several advisors, including real estate services company JLL. Later, he paid for the digitization of Allcargo. “We have tried and failed at this,” his father said as he handed him the procedure (digitisation). You must now carry it out! Shetty’s work currently encompasses a variety of platforms, including data science, consumer applications, automation, and the startup environment. He and his team at ECU International created solutions that could be used in all of the company’s international markets from the top down.
Shetty cited ECU’s digital offering as one of the top three in the world, with door-to-door serviceability across nations. What we actually brought to India, according to him, were all the ECU-related peripherals, such as startup collaboration, automation, and data science. Allcargo specialises in less-than-container load (LCL) cargo, which is more difficult to digitise, according to Shetty. “It is quite simple to become a digital full container load (FCL) company. And the reason is that FCL is your resale business in the sense that all you need to launch a digital freight forwarding business is one client and one container, he said. For LCL, he explained, you must file your box by at least 75% to break even. There are 40 various types of clients. And not only is the destination but also the origin of your cargo filled. Therefore, you must have the necessary infrastructure. You need proper operations, sales, customs, and everything else in both locations. Therefore, it is really challenging to establish an LCL digital company,” he said “What you will have is truly, truly unique,” Shetty continued. “If you’re able to digitise that, if you’re able to automate a significant amount, if you’re able to drive go-to-market in a digital way, if you’re able to use a lot of advanced analytics to make decision making internally a lot quicker, and give that visibility to customers a lot better.
