After Corona, along with health and economy, logistics services were also affected to a great extent. The supply chain was almost closed due to fear of infection. There was demand coming from the people, orders were also coming to the companies, but no movers or courier service company was getting ready to work easily. Seeing this problem, Avinash Raghav, a resident of Jamshedpur, took an initiative last year and started the work of logistics services on a large scale. They started working following the Covid protocol and continued the supply chain across the country. He also benefited from this and in less than 2 years the turnover of his company reached more than Rs 10 crores.
43-year-old Avinash originally hails from Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. After completing his engineering studies in 1999, he shifted to Delhi. Here he worked in different companies for about 7 years. After this, he moved to the Middle East country in the year 2006. Since then till now working there. During this time he has done business analysis and policy-making work for more than two dozen companies. In this sense, he has a lot of experience in almost every industry.
Regarding his startup idea, Avinash says that three years ago the idea of working in this sector came to my mind. I realized that there is a lot of scope in this sector and the working people are few. So I already started working at the marketing and research level. I went to the ground in different cities of India, understood the needs of the people. I started gathering information about how people use logistics services and what kind of facilities companies provide.
After this, I came to know that movers are available for big companies in some way, but common people have to face a lot of problems. Most people do not even know where and with whom to contact. How to send their belongings and household items from one place to another. Sometimes they have to pay more amount than they need. The issue of trust is also very high, as this sector is not organized. So I decided to work in this sector.
Avinash converts disaster into opportunity in Covid, says that we started our startup named Shift Freight just before Covid i.e. in February 2020. The setup was also deposited in Delhi, but a few days later due to Covid, the lockdown was imposed. For a few days, we could not understand what to do. Most of the people working in this sector had stopped work. The supply chain had come to a standstill. So keeping the transition in mind, we also stopped work. It was nothing less than a setback for us.
He says that after a few days I came to know that due to Covid people are not able to go to the market, they are ordering the things they need from home. In such a situation, this is the right opportunity to work. Right now people need logistics services. What was it then, we prepared ourselves afresh, made a strategy according to the Covid protocol? Sanitizers, PPE kits, and masks were arranged on a large scale. Trained its employees for this and started contactless delivery keeping in mind the safety of the customers. We also provided PPE kits and masks too many customers.
Avinash's team started delivering their products to the people with the Covid protocol. Soon they started getting a better response. Month by month his growth increased. Within a year, he made his reach across the country. Along with Delhi, he started his office in other cities as well. The number of vendors and delivery partners started increasing. Earlier, where up to 50 orders used to come every month, within a year its number reached more than 1500. At present, more than 70 people work in Avinash's team. He has tied up with more than 1500 delivery partners across the country. Every day they are delivering more than 70 orders.
He says that at present we are providing logistic support for everything except plants and pets. This includes products such as household, daily use, vehicles, office items, corporate items, which our team delivers directly to the customer's doorstep. On average, our team delivers the goods safely anywhere in the country within 15 days. They say that our team does three-layer packing so that the product is not damaged.
Avinash says that at present we are marketing our own website-app as well as through social media and Google. Along with this we also have a toll-free number. People can contact us through this. People can also talk to our team if they want. Once we receive orders or requests from people, our team starts working accordingly. There are many teams for this at different levels.
A team handles the requests of the people. The other team categorizes each type of demand and then sends them to the respective team. The third team collects the product from the customer's home and then the fourth team does its packaging work. Similarly, the next team manages the delivery of that product and makes arrangements to deliver it to the designated place.
The demand for logistics services in India has increased over the years. As new startups are getting started, people are shifting towards e-commerce platforms, thus the scope of this sector is increasing. However, there are not as many suppliers as there is demand. According to a report, there are about 40 thousand logistics supplies in the country every day. While the demand is in crores. That is, there is still a lot of scope in this sector.
Avinash says that soon we are going to give employment to more and more people in this sector. Our team is working on this. We are also going to build a training center. Where people will be given all kinds of information about logistics services.
