Rubal Jain, Managing Director, Safexpress Pvt. Ltd. on the leading logistics player’s strengths, focus areas, and future plans
If it is a pin code in India, Safexpress delivers there, claims Managing Director Rubal Jain. According to him, Safexpress, which delivers in 31,000 pin codes, “covers every square inch of India.” With offices even in Lakshadweep and Andaman, the brand aims to be the single stock provider across the country for its consumers.
Founded in 1997 by Pawan Jain, Safexpress is India’s leading logistics and supply chain services provider, offering a comprehensive range of logistics solutions including express distribution, 3PL, and consulting. Serving over 5,000 B2B (Business-to-Business) clients, Safexpress also caters to the C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer) segment with specially designed, value-added express delivery services.
“We serve door to door. Our consumers do not require different players and regional support to service their needs. We serve the entire spectrum of the retail value chain from manufacturers and wholesalers to warehouses, distributors and retail stores—B2B is the focus that we maintain,” added Jain.
Safexpress maintains 98 state-of-the-art warehouses, logistics parks, and hubs covering 19.5 million sq. ft. from where it delivers more than 134 million packages every year. Safexpress’ impressive fleet of over 11,000 GPS-enabled vehicles ensures timely deliveries, supported by 2549 direct routes, with a route departing every 34 seconds.
The brand has been witnessing growth under the able leadership of Jain, adding substantial capacity across various locations. Safexpress became the first company to generate automated e-WayBills for customers using handheld devices, eliminating manual processes.
In an exclusive interaction with IndiaRetailing, Jain sheds light on how Safexpress has evolved with the logistic industry in the post-pandemic era to fulfil new-age requirements. Edited excerpts…
What value additions do you provide in addition to primary services?
The primary service remains transportation and distribution of packages across the country, along with warehousing. As far as value adds are concerned, we do it in the service itself. We also make deliveries based on appointments, if required. We have started to customise and design our B2B transportation based on the new–age requirements.
We also offer flexible warehousing solutions for customers who need storage for their manufactured goods but are not sure about their final destination. We pick the goods, store them in our warehouse, and ship the consignment when dispatching details are shared. The billing is done only once the product is shipped for delivery, hence providing a seamless and supportive storage solution.
For some customers, we do inward management, in the form of holding and maintaining inventory. The next stage involves getting an appointment from the customer for the time of delivery and sending it across.
How do you use technology for improved efficiency?
We are probably the only company that has completely digitised itself across the board. We provide a digital bill from the point we pick up the order. It is created on-site, and the tracking starts immediately as we scan every box we pick.
We track the package from the customer’s premise to the point of delivery—all details are available in real time. The data is visible to everyone, and it is operated in the same way at all the 814 gateways or locations, we work out of.
We have shifted our ERP onto a cloud-based microservices platform, which allows us to plug and play a host of solutions. Additionally, about six months ago, we launched our centre for data sciences manned by a data science team.
We are doing a lot of work with data to bring in more reliability and improve transit time. We are still the fastest in India and want to improve it continuously.
How do you bring in reliability?
If a package is to arrive on a certain day, we ensure that it does, despite challenges and complexities. We plan hard, the data science team is working on insights to help us improve our reliability.
We have teams from Tech Mahindra, KPMG, and IBM working at our innovation centre. The tech platform is constantly evolving as we are working closely with our partners. And that is the way we can bring reliability to our customers.
How do you position your company in the competitive landscape of the market?
By doing one thing very well. The requirement for B2B transportation is huge and we have not let ourselves be distracted. Our list of what we want to do is way very long, and we can be agile because we do not get distracted. We follow a structured process to B2B transportation.
At the end of the day, it is about how much capacity you can build. If you can keep building, there is business available. If you can meet customer needs consistently and be there for them, there is no end to the opportunities available.
At this point, given the size of the market, we see a very bright future for India in the coming years.
Is there any target market for you?
We have eight verticals we mainly look at. The customers who resonate most with us are those who need pan-India distribution.
Our target is largely those who have complex needs across the country or a region and are hitting many locations. For one of our customers, we are doing about 5,000 locations a month. However, even if the customer has a single factory and has only one place to send goods, s/he is welcome.
How do you handle the peak periods to ensure timely deliveries?
The timely delivery is the result of learnings over the years. We should not aim to optimally utilize capacity because of spikes.
We are constantly building capacity and adding fleets. The only way to manage peak is to have capacity that is much higher than what you are currently using. The moment a truck is utilized 60%, we add a second route. In this industry, you must have more capacity than your normal day.
Does technology help here as well?
Our data scientists tell us about the challenges quickly and we start looking into them. Technology comes into play because we are able to reroute a consignment or plan a new route without involving 5,500 people.
For example, a person doesn’t decide where the packet will move. The system just tells him to load the packet in a particular truck and move it. All the 814 locations are managed seamlessly by the system with the help of technology.
What is the growth strategy for your brand?
India is growing and we’re just in the right place at the right time. So, we will remain focused on India. But overall, the growth strategy is clear and simple. We need to build capacity constantly. We need to invest in physical capacity as well as tech capacity and people so that we can manage the whole thing. And the way India is growing, while the unorganized sector will continue to remain and thrive, the organized sector is expected to grow a little bit faster.
In India 99% of B2B logistics is unorganized, and we have a huge path ahead that we can track and follow as long as we can manage it well. If we can manage our network, our people, our teams, our vendors, and our landlords well, we can keep growing.
Safexpress has logistics parks all over the country. You recently launched one in Chennai. Can you highlight the new amenities of this new park?
Logistic parks are our pure-play distribution centres. These centres are huge and are designed for many trucks to go in and come out at any point. The Chennai warehouse sees about 220 trucks come in and go, every day. It is designed with 190 shutters and has 80 ft. roads on both sides.
It is planned in such a way that the loading and unloading for the next destination takes place with a time gap of four hours. That hub has single-handedly given us enough capacity to grow within that part of Chennai. We have three large hubs in Chennai now.
We have also added a separate space there in Chennai, specifically for Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) deliveries and for deliveries that are a bit more complex. It is a separate building within our logistics park so we can give it the kind of focus it needs.
Tell us about your distribution centre network.
We have more than one distribution centre in most states across the country. We have centres in Guwahati, Calcutta, Patna, Bengaluru, and Delhi has four. There is a new one coming up in Mumbai. We have got in Pune, Nagpur, Indore, Jaipur, Rajpura, Ahmedabad and Baroda as well.
We have logistic parks even in tier 2 cities. We recently launched one in Dehradun, Haridwar, Jabalpur, Nasik, Aurangabad, Ludhiana, Jammu, Bhuvaneshwar, Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Srinagar. We launched a huge park in Siliguri and Vishakhapatnam as well.
We are entering tier 3 cities now. At this moment, there are nine of them under construction with our specific design and our requirements.
What does it take to create a large logistic park?
It requires a huge investment. Safexpress follows an asset-light model. We do not own facilities; we have long-term relationships with landlords. They build for us based on our design.
We have a 600-page document for builders/landlords to follow. It covers every aspect of design and everything from the quality of material to be used to the sizing, safety and insulation standards.
Many people are willing to build customised warehouses for Safexpress because we have been around for a long time. They know we are good paymasters. We pay on time. There is not a single rental payment that did not go out as agreed over the last 20 years.
How many people are working in the logistic park?
Our biggest one would have about 130 people. It is designed in ways that it does not need many people…Material comes and goes. There is not much storage as such. There is no other activity that happens there typically.
