DIGITISATION TREPIDATION Turning worries into action

With a focus on ‘how digitalisation is building and enabling confidence in the air cargo industry’, ’s digital conclave looked at how this pandemic has enhanced the use of technology in business. The industry has achieved more in the last four months as compared to the last four to five decades.

Although the world’s biggest lockdown brought every sector to nearly a standstill but air cargo is one of the few sectors that has not stopped working even for a day. With technology being its saviour, the industry has proved itself to be more resilient and agile to deal with the crisis within no time.

The first session of the third CargoTalk’s digital conclave aimed at decoding how technology has come into play with this pandemic going on. The session was led by Keku Bomi Gazder, CEO, AAICLAS; Saurabh Kumar, CEO, Hyderabad Air Cargo; and Amar More, CEO, Kale Logistics Solutions. COVID-19; AN OPPORTUNITY TO TAKE DIGITISATION SERIOUSLY

According to Gazder, digitisation is an enabler and not a revenue generator. He said, “It is a value-add to our industry which is long due. We are the land of IT professionals and yet we are not 100 per cent digitised. It seems to be a bit of a challenge to understand why we are not moving at least into an e-airway bill mode. We need to think even beyond paperless or digitisation which is to do with being contactless. It means less interaction in the physical world.”

With a belief that the pandemic is an opportunity for us to look at digitisation seriously, Gazder said, “We have data, but we don’t have big data; we have technology, what we don’t have is adaptability to technology; we have the way, what we don’t have is a will. The entire world is facing this problem but what distinguishes us from the rest of the world is the fact that they have moved at a much faster pace as far as digitisation is concerned. Leave the rest, look at how much the shipping industry and road industry have gone into technology. There is a huge gap between what we should be doing and what we are doing at this moment.”

“Thirdly, this pandemic has given us the time to experiment with new technologies