Velogic: Engaging the best of bright India
Nawaz Gobindram, Regional Manager - India Subcontinent, Velogic (the logistics arm of Rogers Group), talks about his vision for the company and the opportunities that lie in the Indian market.
What services do you offer to the trade?
We made our presence in India 10 years ago. Today we have six offices with a headcount of 65. We are offering products like air export/import, sea export/import, warehousing, transportation, customs brokerage, project management etc. Also, and most importantly, we are a shareholder of Air Mauritius. In Mauritius we are also into packaging of special sugar for exporters. Mauritius is known for sugarcane. We also do packaging for big brands in the UK; we have a factory there where we buy sugarcane and package it locally.
How many offices do you have in India and abroad? Is expansion on the cards?
We have six offices in India based in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Tiruppur, and Tuticorin; we have 32 offices worldwide, spanning eight countries.
We were thinking of expanding to Ahmedabad and Kolkata, but kept the plan on hold because of the implementation of GST. We wanted to first tackle GST with registration of our offices in their respective states. Now that we are GST compliant, we will be setting up the two offices by beginning of 2018.
We also want to do some acquisition of Indian freight forwarders. This is under inorganic growth, which will help us in growing and positioning ourselves in the country. We strongly believe India is a growing market and we need to be there. This will help us in building our network and we could expand our network in more than six cities.
What is your USP?
We are different from other service providers in the sense that we have a strong, dynamic team focused on customer service. Our team is very knowledgeable about the demand of customers. We believe in training, so we have built a robust training programme, where we cater to all the latest technologies; we cover digital marketing, e-commerce, IoT, artificial intelligence, etc. We study the activity of each and every customer and then provide a tailor-made solution for them. In between these processes, we also educate our customers; it’s a two-way traffic.
We educate our internal as well as external customers about where we need their support and where they can have our support to streamline the process. No shipment is small for us to handle. We bring attention to all shipments equally. It has been 10 years since Velogic has been offering quality service in India. With our core values, we always try to offer a single solution to our customers for their convenience.
Have you faced any challenge with GST?
For GST, exporters and service providers should be registered. We had some difficulty in dealing with this, but we had made arrangements to takeup the challenge well in advance. Our special IT and accounts team in Mauritius accompanied us during this time. Our employees from Mauritius came here to help us in implementing all the GST processes.
What is your take on GST implementation in India?
GST has been going on smoothly, however, there are some amendments still to be implemented by the government because in a country like India, it is difficult to get it smooth in one go. Also, these amendments are helping us streamline the process.
We are also a WCA member, which helps us connect with the world at a click. This also benefits our customers with financial protection and service.
How has the Indian market evolved for the group?
When you look at the bright spots in the world market, India is one of them. India’s 100th rank in ease of doing business is really good. We have extensively been promoting the country all around the world. For the first time in history, a country has moved 30 places in a year. Another advantage that India has is that it is a multi-product country, quite unlike others.
Velogic has been offering quality service in India. With our core values, we always try to offer a single solution to our customers
What is your take on governmental initiatives and the attention they’re giving to this sector?
With several initiatives in place, the government is trying to bring big structural changes that will automatically bring competitiveness to the Indian market, on a par with global trends. Now that the journey has begun, the government is doing all it can to bring down the logistics cost.