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we started hiring our sales team for the to go and negotiate rates and figure Tell me about your previous and
first time in three years. out what the current rate in the market current financial year in terms of
We had opened up 17 cities by is because the cold chain industry is revenue, profit, margins, business and
September 2020. And post that we had heavily affected by seasonality. growth?
put a stop to it because the intent was to We took over the complete primary Growth has been good for us in 2021.
say our model is scalable. We will get to movement and storage across India. For example, the growth that we had
at least 30 to 35 cities by the end of 2022. His team got one single point of contact registered from November 2020 to May
to manage all their primary movement 2021, double that growth we were able to
Have you been equally cautious while and storage. My team also optimized the register just in one month between June
building your team? cost of storing between different cities, and July 2021. We are not the size of the
Our hiring philosophy has been fairly ensuring that you are running intercity in largest player around. But if we continue
simple: knowledge and expertise is an optimized fashion. The conversations on this growth path, we will get there in
one part of it, but we try and prioritize that my team has now with him is more the matter of the next 12 months.
the intent and motivation. Since the around how to tackle the B2B segment
focus was on reliability, sustainability or direct to consumer deliveries. What we could expect from AbleCold
and scalability, the strategy has been soon in terms of expansion,
extremely successful. The intent and As a cold chain company offering technology, new clients and growth?
motivation for any early-stage startup reliable quality operations, how do You can expect AbleCold to be India's
are far more important than knowledge you make sure that the temperature is largest network of reliable integrated
and expertise. maintained throughout? cold chain solutions where big brands,
For AbleCold, the bigger thing is not small brands and distributors can come.
Who are your clients? Which are the monitoring whether the temperature Hopefully, we get to that stage where
verticals you focus on? is correct or not, but monitoring the you see a small AbleCold mark on the
Our clients are located across India inputs, which ensure that the operations ice cream you buy saying that it has
and their movements are also run in a way that a temperature breach gone through the right temperature
happening everywhere. I can divide will not happen. across the supply chain.
the overall market into three broad For example, a temperature breach
product segment categories, fruits happens at cold storage. That's
and vegetables, pharmaceuticals, and output and there's nothing
processed foods. The processed food I can do about it. But
segment is where we have focused our focus is more
on building the business in the initial on controlling, for
part of the business, while fruits and example, the cold
vegetables and pharmaceuticals were in room door opening.
our plan always. That is an input,
which is what we
How do you help your clients solve monitor and that
problems? Give me at least one case is the place where
study? the reliability in
One of our clients import the frozen operation starts
seafood to Mumbai and distribute it coming.
across 15 to 20 cities in India. The
product needs to be stored in all of these
cities and then further sales happen.
Earlier, for 30 percent of his volume,
goes with one organized player but
unorganized segment handles the
remaining. Dealing with so many
players across different geographies
is a challenge. Second, there are no
standardized operations, some will Abhay Kothari
charge on a pallet basis, some will Founder
charge on per kg basis, some will AbleCold Logistics
charge on per cubic feet basis at
storage. The third issue was in terms
of the primary movement, say from
Mumbai to Calcutta. Every single time a
vehicle is required, his team would have
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