The Hellman Vision: “For the better, together”

A freight forwarding company that was established about 153 years ago in Germany has come a long way, expanding its network globally. While a lot of things have changed over the years, especially the speed of logistics, the ethics and values ingrained into the culture of the company remain robust. Detailing on what has changed and what has not changed at Hellman Global over the years, Reiner Heiken, CEO says, “This is still a family-owned company. We have always tried to be innovative and forward thinking as an entrepreneur. This is still “a people’s business,” our employees have a sense of ownership. We have a decentralised management strategy.”

Over the years Hellman has evolved to become more global and cosmopolitan with a diversity driven culture. Even at the company’s head office, a lot of Indians have moved into several positions, be it Finance or IT. Hellman had been a very decentralised organisation managed by a few trusted people and directly controlled by the owners, but this has changed since Reiner Heiken took over, the company has also transformed from being an owner-run company to an executive managed business. “In the past, we had a lot of entrepreneurial spirit all the way, but lacked proper governance, which is not good for a global company. In the past 5 years we have brought in a lot of good governance, but not in a bureaucratic way because we continue to maintain the values and culture of the organisation,” explains Madhav Kurup, Regional CEO IMEA. As the company expanded its global footprint, a huge network of offices was established which needed to be utilised optimally for proper growth of the company. In 2019, when Reiner Heiken travelled globally, he observed that regional offices were functioning as individual pockets, which was not a good sign for a global company.

To ensure the services remained agile, their good governance practices helped them secure large volumes of cargo both in exports and imports. Hellman today has dedicated systems in place, one each for sea freight, air freight, accounting systems, and a massive digitisation move that has ensured use of new technologies connecting global offices into a proper structure, which also helped in creating better touch points for customers, upping the benchmark in efficiency and quality. The vision of the company is “for the better, together,” Which Reiner Heiken explains as, “We want to do it better for our customers, become a better employer, contribute to better our environment, lots of opportunities are here and all of this has to be done together by the management and teams. The most important thing for us is carrying high values as part of the company culture, be reliable, forward thinking, build strong relationships with customers to understand their pain points and become their logistics partner of choice.” As a result, the turnover last year was $5 billion as compared to $4 billion in 2022. In a one-to-one with Maritime Gateway, Reiner Heiken, CEO, Hellman Worldwide Logistics and Madhav Kurup, Regional CEO IMEA, detail on the company’s strategy, digitisation and plans for the Indian market.

Today we are in a world of volatility and uncertainty. How do you navigate these challenges?

Reiner Heiken: To navigate these complexities first of all you need to have a proper structure that clarifies who is responsible for what? Responsibility and ownership needs to be very clear. We are in about 60 countries and we have four main products. We have experts to deal with these operations and navigate through these complexities. Like Madhav Kurup is responsible for everything in the Indian subcontinent, Africa and Middle East (IMEA) region. The issues and challenges are different in APEC and the Americas.

What has been the impact of digitalisation on your operations and service delivery?

Reiner Heiken: We have a history of experimenting with new things, even if it fails, we keep trying for new things. Today, we are a strong global forwarding network, but many German companies have not tried expanding at the right time and now they have missed to expand their global footprint. We are also exploring new technologies like AI, ChatGPT etc., and there are a lot of interesting startups in these domains which makes sense to invest in them. We are always open for investing in startups. Last year, when I took over, we changed the position of CIO to include Systems & Network, then we have a Chief Digital Officer who takes care of the systems and is also the board member taking care of innovation. As forwarders we are not used to talking to people with innovative ideas, but you can’t cover all, so we need to have people in the team who are able to achieve this. In Hamburg we have an innovation hub in the logistics sector and we have decided to become a member there. There we will get a chance to interact with people who control other businesses. Innovation for a small – medium sized company like ours is important to compete and ensure we are proceeding as planned and be competitive.

How important is the Indian market in your global operations?

Madhav Kurup: Within the IMEA region, India is the largest market in terms of the share size. This region extends from Bangladesh all the way to South Africa. We have 20 operating entities, of which 14 are country organisations, then we have six specialised joint ventures. We have vertical specialisations; in automotive aftermarket spare parts we are the market leaders in the Middle East. Then we have joint ventures in healthcare and chemicals. We are very strong in road freight in Europe, where we started about 153 years ago. We have always expanded with organic growth and not by making acquisitions like others. We started expanding organically in Hong Kong and then moved to US, Australia, South Africa, expanding our network as customers demanded. Today India is the fifth performing country globally and going by the size of the market, in India we can say we are still in our early days. We had opened our first office about 17 years ago and we still feel young in India. In India we are mainly a freight forwarding organisation and we particularly focus on two main products – air cargo, sea cargo and Customs clearance. Our plan is to grow more here, for example, in automotives we operate a warehouse for Ford Motors in Sanand, and we are establishing another warehousing operation in Mumbai for Hauser. We also have pockets of our warehousing activity across the country. Many of our customers are looking at creating hubs in India so that they can reach out to any market within India in 48 hours through road or rail. In road logistics, we will create solutions on digital platforms for specific industries.

Reiner Heiken: India was already expected to be an upcoming market 25 years ago and for the past ten years we are seeing it happen at an extremely high speed. The surrounding market potential is also large between Middle East, Africa and Far East. Again, we have learnt from the war in Ukraine, because Germany had high dependency for oil & gas from one country. We are exporting too much to China which is not good, so India emerges as China plus one option. Our main investment in future will go into India.