Indian logistics industry gets a dedicated warehousing association
The new industry body is expected to give a fillip to the rapid development of world class warehousing in the country. Third party logistics, e-commerce, digitization and retail are factors that have driven up the demand for warehousing significantly this year.
October 19, 2021: In what can be considered a big boost to India’s logistics sector, one of the first dedicated industry bodies for the warehousing industry called the Warehouse Association of India was formed earlier this week.
The new association signed its first charter in New Delhi in the presence of former special secretary logistics under the ministry of commerce Pawan Kumar Agarwal (Retd) who was the chief guest for the occasion.
“The Warehousing Association of India will address the challenges being faced by the warehousing industry and work with all stakeholders for the purpose of ease of doing business aligned with governments initiatives,” said Manu R Bhalla, who is the director and global head for contract logistics and supply chain at the Freight Systems Group and the first president of the new association in a social media post earlier this week.
Other dignitaries at the launch included Smriti Sharma, head of public policy (operations) at Amazon, Sunil Tyagi, managing partner at Zeus Law Associates, Parag Warerkar, chief visionary officer at M.R Warerkar & Associates and Anish Kumar, director at Dnova Infracon.
This development is particularly significant in light of the fact that leasing of industrial and logistics spaces rose by 13 percent to 14 million square feet in the January to June 2021 period in eight major Indian cities compared to the second half of calendar year 2020, as per data compiled in a report by global property consultant CBRE.
The report mentioned that leasing activity has seen a spurt during this period with Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru dominating the leasing activities and accounting for almost 50 percent of the space absorption in H1 2021.
