Overview

With the changing economic scenario, factors such as globalization of markets, international economic integration, removal of barriers to business and trade and increased competition have enhanced the need of transportation. It is one of the most important infrastructure requirement which is essential for the expansion of opportunities and plays an important role in making or breaking the competitive positioning.

Transport volumes in India remain much less than those in the developed countries. India has still to go a long way in strengthening its transportation network. The countries transportation network suffers from several inadequacies and, in particular it has little resilience to deal with unforeseen demands.

Transportation, like all industries is largely influenced by information and communication technologies with the focus being on knowledge of customer needs and value added services. Surface transport is provided by the Road and the Indian Railways (primarily for carrying low value bulk commodity, mostly for the government sector). Cargo Road Transport is entirely in the hands of the private sector. An estimated 1.2 million trucks (9 tons capacity) crisscross the country covering more than 80,000 kilometers of roads. In India road transportation is preferred for cargo movement, where flexibility of routing assumes importance. It facilitates door-to-door delivery, overcoming unnecessary delays which normally take place in the other modes of transportation.

Express Cargo Industry

Need

In today's business big or small , domestic or global, the value of time is clearly immense. Business today is focusing on how it can deliver goods and services to global markets in a timely and reliable manner. Besides efficiency in pick up , timely delivery , timely information and availability of other infra structural facilities for efficient handling of cargo transportation have become the need of the day. In other words prompt customer service is what gives competitive edge to the players of the cargo transportation industry in today's rapidly changing environment. It was this need which stimulated the growth of the express cargo industry worldwide.

The express cargo industry is judged primarily on the following key parameters :

Speed of distribution
World wide service
Security and reliability
Value added Service
Customer care

To meet the above needs , the express industry is developing effective use of information technology, which forms the backbone of the industry. Right from the pickup point, the precise status of the consignment needs to be monitored at every stage of its journey. Secondly the use of multi modal services assumes importance in order to provide turnkey solutions to the customer. Also, guaranteed timely delivery gives the required confidence to the customer to reduce his inventory positions at various levels of distribution.

Indian Scenario

Today the Indian customer's standard and the level of expectation have gone up dramatically . They have become world class customers and thus expect world class services. Hence it is customer service which is going to give the competitive edge to any industry in the future.

The domestic express cargo industry is meeting the customer satisfaction needs by providing speedy and safe delivery of cargo like documents, packages, samples, exhibition material etc. Domestic market for door-to-door express cargo market is more than Rs.400 crore and the current rate of growth is in a region of a healthy 35% per annum. The industry has been making an increasingly important contribution to the economic growth of the country by providing logistics to the cargo movement.

Sector-wise Market Share- Express Cargo

Express cargo can be segmented in four categories as Organized Sector, which operates in domestic as well as international markets, semiorganised sector, unorganized sector and EMS speed post, which is express arms of the postal department (Refer Fig.1).

Fig.1
(Source: Transport India 2000)

Overall analysis of express cargo

Express cargo industry is undergoing phenomenal growth due to the rising popularity of e-commerce. There is bound to be conspicuous diversion of low volume, high value tiny packages from traditional cargo to express mode in the coming years. Keeping that in view, there is lot of scope to flourish the express cargo industry in Indian scenario. To yield the fruit of these positive changes it is important that the industry works in close tandem with the regulatory agencies and the role of the latter should be of a facilitator rather than that of a regulator.