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This is an excerpt from an article on Crunchbase News titled “Supply Chain is Eating Venture Capital”

It is not surprising that supply chain continues to attract venture capital of nearly the same level as the exceptional 2021. There are strong factors driving these investments.  Changes in the business dynamics requires companies to completely rethink and redesign their supply chain across functions – planning, procurement, production and distribution.

Factors like pandemic-driven increase in e-commerce, need to transition to omni-channel, new models like quick commerce, etc. cannot be serviced by traditional supply chain processes, which were largely automation in silos. The interconnectedness that is required for companies to even survive in today’s market circumstances creates strong tail winds for startups optimising and disrupting supply chain.

Also, building resilience in their supply chain is a boardroom agenda for almost all corporations. (Building resilience essentially means how now to get disrupted when there are disruptions in your supply chain stakeholders and destinations).

Additionally, as more and more manufacturing moves from China to India, there is a clear opportunity today for creating the supply chain of the future.

At Supply Chain Labs, we invest in startups well positioned to capture these massive global opportunities.

Check how you can engage on www.supplychainlabs.in.

Supply Chain Labs is India’s first supply chain focused fund.

We have opened applications for cohort 4. Every year, SCL runs an incredibly rigorous selection process to identify best-in-class start-ups in the supply chain segment.

We collaborate with and invest in tech startups that are solving supply chain problems of global relevance across industries. Our model of capital+expertise+market access accelerates the pace of growth of startups.

The rigour of the model is proven with >6x valuation expansion in the companies that we have engaged with, and ~80% of the cohort companies have drawn follow-on capital from marquee institutional investors.

To apply, visit www.supplychainlabs.in

Rohit Bhayana, Ashish Taneja, Vineet Agarwal, Neelam Dhawan, Puneet Pushkarna, Ankur Bansal

Supply Chain Management plays a key role in the economy of any country. This contributes to improving the relationship with customers, suppliers, income generation, and most importantly, the availability of products in the remotest of places. But, there are many challenges that a country like ours is highly susceptible to because of its vastness and diversity.

We interviewed Ms. Ajaita Shah — CEO of Frontier Markets, one of our cohort companies in Supply Chain Labs, to have a closer look at how her enterprise, which focuses on rural India, is carving a new path for rural outreach with innovative supply chain management via assisted e-commerce.

She has vast experience in this particular field and she has been constantly working with social enterprises, microfinance, rural distribution and marketing to ensure that companies get a never-before rural inlet; while also empowering rural women.

Here are the notable key points taken from the interview:

Frontier Markets: Their Role and Responsibility in Supply Chain

Frontier Markets, essentially, are the suppliers to rural customers. What they do is bridge the gap between access and help brands to reach rural customers and remote villages, especially rural women. The entire model is based on assisted commerce that is fully run by women entrepreneurs known as Sahelis.

Shah says, “We essentially work with three critical things:

• One, generating demand for products and services — helping rural customers actually know what the products are and what the services are.
• Second, we do physical fulfilment. We take the products and deliver them to the doorstep of where the actual customer lives.
• And third, we’re collecting data to help companies understand better details and insights about rural customers.

We do this through a physical and a digital platform. Our supply chain essentially is a group of rural women who we invest in and who are connecting us to the customer.”

Challenges faced by Companies: How can they overcome them?

Well, it is because of the massive market demand. In the last couple of years, rural customers are growing rapidly. They have access to the Internet, improved infrastructure, the desire to actually buy white goods and products and the money to make it happen. Almost a 2.2 trillion rupee market is untapped today.

“The reason why it’s not tapped is not because of demand, but it’s actually product and service companies’ lack of efficiency to reach this customer base. This rural customer is one hundred million households or seven hundred million people, but they’re scattered in seven hundred thousand villages,” says Ajaita.

Another challenge is digital disconnection. E-commerce platforms today have no outreach to the digitally-challenged rural customers.

Bridging the Gap!

Frontier Markets has designed its model in such a way that it’ll be helpful to connect to rural customers, who actually want genuine products and services. Frontier Markets partnered with companies like Samsung, Philips, Crompton, Bajaj, as well as even social enterprises that are coming up with innovative solutions. This assistance between the companies and the people helps the total ecosystem to work fluidly.

Rural customers get the confidence to buy online and the companies get better access through know-how. So, the companies can essentially bridge the gap between rural customers and their infrastructure limitations. They can continue their services even if they don’t have any sort of infrastructure present in that particular place.

Tech won’t solve all approaches!

This is one unique way to handle the customers in a rural scenario with Sahelis.

According to Ajaita, this market has a customer base of half a million households and Frontier Markets has a network of 10000 Sahelis. They are the women entrepreneurs who are best at getting customer insights because they go into the hearts and minds of where the rural customer lives. Every data point is looked at with exclusivity. This data point can inform product companies about the actual demand for the product and then deliver the products.

What makes this system really unique in terms of services is that consumers can directly communicate about not what they want to buy but what they actually need on this platform. The model has been designed to look at the rural customer as a lifetime value solution. So, the customers trust their Sahelis in a way that they will intentionally buy everything from them, forever.

The rural market is not always a tech-centric market. Tech won’t solve all. Consumers here are more inclined towards a trusted face with a digital look — assistance is a significant factor here.

The vision of Frontier Markets

Ajaita, with her experience of 17 years, informs us that they do have some strong visions in place. They do value their rural customers, especially the rural women.

They believe that a woman is the most trustworthy, opportunistic service provider in the village. She can go into any house; she can have any conversation. Thus, she can become a very valuable asset in the entire system.

They also believe in a shared value principle. Like all the stakeholders in this system, from the suppliers, the field staff, the Sahelis and finally, the consumers — should all have an economic impact. Any product or service that they introduce, ensures that they track whether their rural customer is able to save money, make money or have a better life. That’s a very strong philosophy that they’ve always built on.

The Impact on Growth in the Rural Scenario in this Pandemic

Everything revolves around social commerce today. E-Commerce is based on online social data, that is curated from specific data points along the way. Frontier Markets has taken this concept and customised it in their own way and have modified the supply chain according to the demands of the rural consumers.

So, the influencers here are the Sahelis and they have strategic tools to assist the rural consumer, collect data points and help product companies assess the demand. It is a hybrid solution for social commerce — ideal for rural India.

“We understood our value very differently last year when the pandemic started; we realized that as a rural access company, our role in the ecosystem was going to be more critical than ever on a job creation perspective, on an essential delivery’s perspective, supply chain perspective, scale perspective and insights perspective. That’s really what encouraged us to grow. Even though the pandemic would have told most companies to slow down, we actually ramped up in a very significant way.

When it comes to pandemic response, we’re critically positioned to continuously help protect the rural customers. So, we’re looking forward to enabling jobs. We’re looking forward to continuing to bridge that essential delivery gap. Now, we will also play a significant role when it comes to health care and get involved in health education, insurance deliveries; Covid crisis response.”

The creativity and the tailor-made strategies make this women-led platform — Frontier Markets, one of the most robust end-to-end commerce platforms that provide products and services delivered at consumers’ doorsteps in villages and helps brands fulfil and curate their products in a marketplace easily.

Today, an increasing number of businesses are taking a technology-first approach to run their businesses and are looking to transform digitally — back end to front end, but the fashion industry’s back end is still run the same way it has been for decades.

The global retail fashion market is worth trillion dollars, with just under half of that being spent in China and the USA. The world produced 150 billion garments in 2018 alone, of which 50 billion garments or one-third remained unsold! A greater cause for concern is that the $3 trillion Global Fashion & Apparel industry is the second most polluting industry after oil, contributing to water pollution, air pollution and solid waste pollution.

With technologies helping in demand sensing, retail challenges across the industry can be reduced and ample potential and value in the fashion industry can be unleashed. It’s time for fashion businesses to adopt technology and redefine quickly.

Supply Chain Labs with Stylumia is trying to tackle some challenges that lie in the fashion industry — fashion trend forecasting, demand forecasting and prediction systems. Stylumia is an AI-led fashion intelligence start-up founded by former Myntra COO, Ganesh Subramanian in December 2015 with the goal of reducing waste in the fashion and lifestyle industries. Through its suite of proprietary solutions powered by ML-based prediction algorithms and demand science, the startup serves over 100 customers in India, the United States, Europe, Hong Kong, and Japan, ranging from Fortune 100 to small and medium fashion and lifestyle brands/retailers, as opposed to the intuitive fashion prediction and forecasting systems available in the market globally.

Stylumia uses machine learning to improve product assortments, optimize inventory management, and provide consumer-driven fashion forecasts, resulting in revenue growth, inventory reduction, and increased profitability of 30–50 per cent in under a year for its customers, with a 10x return on investment.

“This is the time to expand and strengthen your online business.”

Stylumia sees an opportunity to help fashion firms, manufacturers, and exporters scale their digital businesses through the start-up’s top three products: Stylumia MIT (market intelligence tool) Stylumia FIT (fashion intelligence tool) and Stylumia Apollo (fashion predictor bot), which assist in forecasting fashion trends and predict demand in the constantly changing fashion business from the design and creation stage to the pre-season commit level to in-season demand and store distribution inventory with 80 per cent accuracy — helping clients scale their e-commerce businesses on a 360-degree basis.

Rajendra Lora is a farmer’s son who has seen the struggles and challenges faced by a farming family. He is driven by the mission of helping farmers increase their income and help them manage their businesses better. As Rajendra puts it “I am not helping them earn more. What I am giving them extra is their own money, which is lost due to inefficiencies of the country”.

Agriculture is the primary source of 70% of Indian households. And more than 80% of these farming families are small or marginal, facing the maximum challenges and are most vulnerable.

To remedy this and address the pain points in a regular Indian farmer’s life, Rajendra Lora, along with his wife Chandrakanta Sahu, founded FreshoKartz in 2016. Coming from an agricultural background themselves, Rajendra and Chandrakanta have been able to build a strong value proposition that is practical to execute in the Indian rural landscape.

Focused approach: Freshokartz is currently focused on helping farmers buy Agri inputs more efficiently.

An average small & mid-sized farmer buys Agri inputs worth Rs.1 lacs a year, and equipment worth Rs.1 lac over a three year period. These purchases are riddled with issues — the retailers are far away from the farmers’ village, thus requiring the farmer to make the long journey on a working day to buy these inputs like seeds, fertilizers, etc. These frequent trips cost the farmer a lot of money.

Moreover, the quality of the seeds is unpredictable and availability too is erratic. Additionally, there is a 10% — 30% price fluctuation due to a lack of transparency.

In this scenario, Freshokartz offers farmers a strong value proposition and makes their agri-input purchases very efficient.

• Door-step delivery on the same day
• Wider choice
• Predictability of quality and supply
• Easy return policy

To help farmers make better-informed decisions, Freshokarz also provides farmers advice on what to grow, when to grow, how much fertilizer to use, etc. It also makes it easier for farmers to obtain financial assistance or insurance through its partners.

Freshokartz uses agronomists and contact centers to assist farmers with soil-based crop and fertilizer recommendations.

Unique business model

Freshokartz has built a comprehensive tech platform and app via which they deliver these services to farmers. However, knowing that most farmers may not be familiar with using a tech platform, Freshokartz has created a unique model of Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs). These VLEs, called Saarthis, are Freshokatrz’ representatives who help farmers buy the inputs they need and provide them with the advice.

Encouraging traction with inspiring long-term plans

Freshokartz currently serves 10,000 farmers across 100 villages via 100 VLEs. They are currently focused on Rajasthan and will continue to do so this year.

As the community of farmers connected with Freshokartz grows, it plans to help farmers also sell their products better by connecting them to buyers that can offer better rates, and support them with logistics and warehousing support to make the selling process more efficient.

In 3 years’ time, Freshokartz aims to serve a million farmers via 100,000 VLEs.

Supply Chain Labs is excited to support Freshokartz in their journey where they have dedicated themselves to reengineering and reinventing Indian agriculture to support Indian farmers and boost their productivity with products, agri-specialists, and education platforms.

Every year, nearly 70 million tonnes of food is wasted in India. This is largely because the cold supply chain for perishables is inadequate and broken. While large brands like Starbucks and KFCs of India have well-organised logistics services, smaller businesses do not. This area is extremely unorganised, with all kinds of vehicles, from vans to scooters, being used in the delivery of food cartons. In order to be able to save costs, hygiene is sacrificed, and jugaad logistical practices are employed.

Many small and medium-sized food and beverage businesses require assistance with everyday food logistics. In the absence of such services, they are not able to replenish stock often, as they are unable to service sales outlets frequently enough in a day. (How often have you noticed that the pastry in a bakery is stale by evening because the manufacturer delivers it only once in the morning?)

With the growth of cloud kitchens, artisanal brands, and an explosion of retail points (like modern trade stores, dark stores, and DC hubs), the need for efficient intra-city logistics for perishables is even more accentuated.

That’s where Just Deliveries (JD) comes in. JD is a startup focused on intra-city logistics for perishables. By offering a shared cold logistics service, JD is able to help brands put fresher stock of perishable items on store shelves and food-service outlets.

Just Deliveries aggregates service providers like delivery vans and ensures compliance with SLAs like temperature control, hygiene, cleanliness, punctuality, etc. Moreover, JD optimises capacity utilisation by sharing the van with several brands. As a result, JD is able to offer cost-effective, efficient, and timely service to brands. The tech platform and app provide visibility to all stakeholders and synchronise processes amongst them.

“At Just Deliveries, our goal is to assist brand owners with the cumbersome logistics process, allowing them to focus their energy entirely on scaling their geographical presence and core business,’’ said Mansi Mahansaria, Founder, Just Deliveries.

Supply Chain Labs is excited to support Just Deliveries in providing last-mile inter-city logistics for perishables. By providing more efficient and more frequent milk runs, it allows brands of perishable products to service retail outlets more frequently, thus helping keep fresher stock on shelves.

“Services like JD not only prevent food wastage but also directly impact the profitability of brands of perishable goods through lower returns of expired products and increased sales points. Can a brand selling paneer, for example, deliver fresh stock to 500 retailers every day by itself? By taking care of the entire logistics piece, JD is also enabling more individuals to become food entrepreneurs and enabling existing food entrepreneurs to expand much faster than they would otherwise be able to do on their own.

It is also a very large market. According to Redseer, food services is a $65 billion market opportunity in India, growing at 9% per annum and likely to reach $110 billion by 2025. Within the food services market of $65 billion, online delivery accounts for a market size of $4.2 billion, growing at 6–7%,” Prajakt Raut, Managing Partner, Supply Chain Labs.

Yes. You read the title right, startup Fellowships are like fitness camps.

Fitness camps do not help you fix everything with respect to your fitness in a single camp. They give you great insights into fitness and help you put together a plan that works and one that matches your unique needs and circumstances. Similarly, Fellowships equip startups with the right insights and new perspectives, access to key resources, mentors and domain experts and steer you towards the right direction but they cannot wave a magic wand to fix everything through a single programme. It is, then, about how startups leverage their learnings at the Fellowship to forge ahead.

India’s One-of-a-Kind Fellowship Enabling the Creation of Extraordinary Impact at Scale

Supply Chain Labs by Lumis Partners is the first-ever acceleration programme in India for startups in the supply chain industry. It is the first-ever Fellowship aimed at fuelling the growth of early-stage startups that have high growth potential.

Supply Chain Labs is an acceleration programme with a vision to solve global problems and create extraordinary value at scale to all stakeholders. This is a one-of-a-kind programme in India that is providing the chosen cohort of startups with access to the best in class resources and Lumis Partners’ global networks, a knowledge-building opportunity at MIT Zaragoza in Spain and tailored mentoring and handholding support to sharpen their solutions/ products, develop strategic edges and realize their full potential. The interventions for each startup in the cohort are defined based on deep-dive reviews into each of the startups.

What makes Supply Chain Labs a Unique Fellowship?

Excellent Mentor Connect

Taking the fitness analogy further, mentors are much like fitness coaches – they can guide startups, provide tips and tailored handholding support, hold the mirror to their business, ask the tough questions and push the startup to realize their full potential or get them to take a step back to get their foundation right. It is the responsibility of the startup to put in the effort and work with discipline and diligence to unlock their full potential and accelerate their growth process.

Supply Chain Labs has been providing startups with impactful and tailored mentoring and handholding support to help them change things around. Each startup is provided with access to excellent mentors – CXOs as anchor mentors and a wider network of subject matter experts. The mentors have helped them strengthen the basics of business, focus/ refocus and fine-tune, introspect on the business models or the product itself, shift their approach to a product-focused one, gearing up for the next phase of growth, etc.

Learning and knowledge-building

Startups have been provided with ample and highly curated opportunities for learning and knowledge building. Through the academic programme at MIT Zaragoza s, the startups have been exposed to new perspectives and approaches in the supply chain space and an understanding product use cases outside India. Through the carefully curated workshops, sessions, etc. by domain experts, industry leaders and mentors, the startups have been exposed to perspectives from the field and insights on what’s happening in the world.

Improved visibility for their solutions/ products in the market

SCL has enabled the cohort of early-stage startups to gain greater visibility in the market. Their products/ solutions have started to gain greater attention and traction.

Quality networking

Startups have been provided access to the best-in-class resources in the startup ecosystem and Lumis’ global networks which have been immensely beneficial to them.

Meaningful Corporate and Investor Connects

Wide gaps and inefficiencies exist in the supply chain industry in India. The main reason for this being the lack of awareness among corporates about next-gen, grassroots innovations happening in the supply chain startups in the length and breadth of the country. To effectively bridge these gaps, raise awareness about these innovative solutions among corporate houses and potential in India, Supply Chain Labs organized curated Corporate and Investor Connects.

Peer Learning

Contrary to the popular belief that startups are constantly competing with each other and that early-stage startups do not have much to share, we have observed at the Supply Chain Labs that there is a great deal of peer learning happening between our startups. This is mainly because they are all early-stage startups operating in the same domain. It further helps that they all generating revenues with a number of paying clients.

India’s first-ever and first-of-its-kind acceleration programme for supply chain startups, Supply Chain Labs by Lumis Partners, is all set to commence on September 1, 2019 with its fantastic final cohort of 9 early-stage, high-growth-potential supply chain startups with cutting-edge solutions to supply chain challenges of global relevance.

This holistic 2-month programme is offered by Lumis Partners, an operating investment firm and a global leader in the logistics and supply chain management space that is committed to bridging the gaps in the supply chain industry, building a resilient and robust ecosystem and thereby, driving the industry towards unparalleled growth and efficiency.

Supply Chain Labs has had overwhelming support from the corporate houses, industry leaders and global investors right from its inception and the Programme has strategic partnerships with MIT (academic partner), Yes Bank (corporate innovation partner) and AWS (technology partner).

The Selection Phase

Having received a remarkable response from supply chain startups from across India, the process of shortlisting the Top 15 out of 600+ applicants for the Grand Jury Session involved rigorous and thorough scrutiny and assessment spread across 4 stages. The fantastic final cohort of 9 high-potential supply chain startups was selected at the Grand Jury Session on August 13, 2019 by a distinguished jury comprising of experienced investors, corporate leaders and industry stalwarts.

The first-ever batch of Supply Chain Labs includes

• Xpedize Ventures Private Limited is a comprehensive tech-enabled platform for Supply Chain Finance that eliminates inefficiencies and delivers profitability for buyers and sellers.

• SuperProcure – TruckHall Pvt Ltd is a cohesive and unique platform to enable businesses of all kinds and sizes to simplify vehicle procurement, trip management and logistics and thereby, reduce their logistics budgets.

• FreightBro is a unique and cohesive freight forwarding platform that enables freight forwards to remove inefficiencies, procure the right prices and boost sales.

• Quifers’ logistics management software is enabling businesses to transform their logistics with effective delivery planning, route optimization, fleet utilization, tracking, etc.

• Odwen – Udghata Technology Private Limited is India’s first DIY warehousing management system that is making warehousing simple, efficient, secure and affordable.

• Rezo Technologies Private Limited is a Supply Chain Finance platform that leverages automation to securely and efficiently connect corporate buyers with suppliers helping them discount or finance invoices at cheaper prices.

• Crofarm AgroProducts is a creating zero-wastage agricultural supply chain that helps farmers get the right price for their produce and consumers get the best-quality and fresh agri-products delivered at their doorstep.

• Smartstorey is a one-stop-shop for home and lifestyle solutions that enables customers to source construction and home interior requirements (from building materials to carpets) from anywhere across the country.

• Elixia Tech is empowering businesses across industries with smart, comprehensive and customized data-enabled solutions for transportation, logistics and supply chain management.

The Acceleration Phase

The 2-month acceleration phase will include tailored handholding support to each of the 9 startups to enable them to refine their solutions/ products, think and act global, develop competitive advantages and build a solid foundation for accelerated growth.

Knowledge and capacity building are key parts of the Programme. The startups will be part of a 1-week programme at MIT’s Zaragoza Logistics Centre (ZLC), Spain to gain exposure to critical concepts and international best practices in the field. The startups will also be part of a series of incisive business, domain and commercial workshops led by mentors, investors, and corporates.

Through the Supply Chain Labs programme, each of the startups will get access to Lumis’ global network of partners, investors, mentors and other best-in-class resources with opportunities to showcase products/ solutions to a curated set of corporates and pitch to potential investors.

The collaboration with the startups does not end with the 2-month acceleration phase. There will be a continued interaction phase spanning 4 months where the startups will continue to receive mentoring and support from Lumis. The graduated startups will be alumni for life with access to the Lumis’ senior leadership for support and guidance.

The next batch for the Supply Chain Labs Programme will be announced in 2020. For any further information, visit https://supplychainlabs.in/.

Supply Chain Labs is an Acceleration Programme by Lumis Partners with MIT as the academic partner, Yes Bank as the corporate innovation partner and AWS as the technology partner for Early-Stage Supply Chain Startups with High Growth Potential.

India’s first-ever Acceleration Programme aimed at revolutionising the supply chain space in India, Supply Chain Labs by Lumis Partners, is all set to kick-off on September 1, 2019. Supply Chain Labs is a first-of-its-kind acceleration programme in India that aims to bring next-gen business models and cutting-edge supply chain solutions to truly transform the efficiency, productivity and profitability for all stakeholders and to bridge the wide gaps that exist in investments in grassroots solutions that solve complex, global SC challenges.

Right from the announcement of the initiative, Supply Chain Labs has received a remarkable response from the SC startups from across the country with over 600 of them applying to be part of the programme. The programme has also received massive support from big corporations, industry leaders and seasoned investors from across the globe.

The Top 15

After a rigorous process of scrutiny and thorough analysis of the applications and ideas spread across 4 stages, 15 startups were shortlisted for the Grand Jury Session on August 13, 2019. The Top 15 startups belong to a wide range of different sub-segments of the supply chain industry and not just traditionally over-invested sub-segments of the industry.

• Crofarm AgroProducts is a creating zero-wastage agricultural supply chain that helps farmers get the right price for their produce and consumers get the best-quality and fresh agri-products delivered at their doorstep.
• Elixia Tech is empowering businesses across industries with smart, comprehensive and customized data-enabled solutions for transportation, logistics and supply chain management.
• Decker Logistics Pvt Ltd’s ValueShipr solution is enabling the development of an organized and transparent Logistics Ecosystem for all associated stakeholders and creating tremendous value.
• Quifers’ logistics management software is enabling businesses to transform their logistics with effective delivery planning, route optimization, fleet utilization, tracking, etc.
• Smartstorey is a one-stop-shop for home and lifestyle solutions that enables customers to source construction and home interior requirements (from building materials to carpets) from anywhere across the country.
• FreightBro is a unique and cohesive freight forwarding platform that enables freight forwards to remove inefficiencies, procure the right prices and boost sales.
• Odwen – Udghata Technology Private Limited is India’s first DIY warehousing management system that is making warehousing simple, efficient, secure and affordable.
• Adapt Ideations Pvt Ltd is a B2B platform leveraging IoT, Blockchain and other futuristic technologies to deliver smart and customized supply chain solutions.
• Rezofin Technologies Private Limited is an SC Finance platform that leverages automation to securely and efficiently connect corporate buyers with suppliers helping them discount or finance invoices at cheaper prices.
• SuperProcure – TruckHall Pvt Ltd is a cohesive and unique platform to enable businesses of all kinds and sizes to simplify vehicle procurement, trip management and logistics and thereby, reduce their logistics budgets.
• Shiplyst Systems Private Limited is a hassle-free and comprehensive platform for businesses to get and compare quotes from multiple freight-forwarders for ocean shipments and effectively manage shipments.
• Xpedize Ventures Private Limited is a comprehensive tech-enabled platform for SC Finance that eliminates inefficiencies and delivers profitability for buyers and sellers.
• Thar Shipping Lines LLP (PortExcel) is an efficient, hassle-free and end-to-end logistics (air and sea) management platform that provides real-time visibility to shipment.
• Logistimo India Private Limited is an open-source, inclusive value chain platform to fulfill healthcare delivery needs and ensure health equity of the rural population.
• Planet Express Innovations Pvt Ltd is a simple and powerful shipping tool that reduces time and effort by 50% for businesses looking to make a global impact.

The Grand Jury Session

At the Grand Jury Session, each of the Top 15 startups did a 6-minute pitch to the jury followed by a 3-minute Q&A round. The final cohort of startups was decided based on the complexity of the problem that the startups are solving, their uniqueness, commercial traction, how they will benefit from the acceleration programme, their vision and growth potential.

The distinguished jury consisted of members of the investor community, industry leaders, domain experts, corporates, seasoned entrepreneurs and the core committee members of Lumis Partners. The jury has years of experience in the SC space and knows the supply chain industry inside out. This was visible in the Q&A session as they asked super domain-specific questions to each of the startups to get deeper insights into their solutions and analyse the possible growth outcomes.

The Distinguished Jury included:

• Saurabh Bakliwal, BCG Consulting

• R Narayan, Power2SME Private Limited

• Arvind Vasu, ABB India

• Pankaj Mitra, Cisco India

• Suman Bose, Siemens India

• Digbijoy Shukla, AWS India

• Prateek Kathpal, Yes Bank

• Rohit Bhayana, Lumis Partners

• Neeraj Bansal, DHL India

• Victor Martinez Angles, Lumis Partners

• Ashutosh Mayank, Lumis Partners

• Girish Shivani, Your Nest

Overall, the Grand Jury Session was a huge success and a momentous occasion for the supply chain industry in India. The seasoned jury finalized the fantastic final cohort of 9 high-potential, early-stage supply chain startups for the Supply Chain Labs Programme that is all set to kick off on September 1, 2019.

The final cohort of 9 startups selected for the SCL Programme are:

1. Xpedize Ventures Private Limited

2. SuperProcure – TruckHall Pvt Ltd

3. FreightBro

4. Quifers

5. Odwen – Udghata Technology Private Limited

6. Rezo Technologies Private Limited

7. Crofarm AgroProducts

8. Smartstorey

9. Elixia Tech

Supply Chain Labs congratulates the top 9 startups and welcomes them onboard for a long-term collaboration.

For further information on the Supply Chain Labs Programme, visit https://supplychainlabs.in/.

Large organizations with mass consumption products are heavily reliant on the effectiveness and efficiency of the supply chain for their profitability and growth. For achieving such efficiency and effectiveness, there needs to be massive digital transformation and redesigning of the supply chain of large organizations.

We interviewed one of the SCL mentors, Suman Bose, to understand his perspectives on the criticality of the supply chain in the product life-cycle, the innovation status of large organizations about the supply chain and what the future of business holds. Suman Bose is an executive advisor to boards and CEOs on strategy and digital transformation. He is the former MD and CEO of Siemens Industry Software – India and has over 20 years of experience in business development.

Here are the key takeaways from the interview.

Key challenges and opportunities in reimagining the supply chain of large organizations

One of the major difficulties in reimagining the supply change and digitally transforming is

Digital transformation of the supply chain enables organizations to thrive, rather than survive in the long run. So, it is key that big companies look at solutions from smaller startups and mid-sized partners to reimagine the way they carry out SC tasks while finding effective ways to address the challenges.

Impact of supply chain innovations on the product life-cycle

Processes expedited through new automation-based business models:

Suman Bose explained the implication of new automation-based business models with the example of truckers in India.

Suppose a truck driver has to deliver a package from Ludhiana to Chennai and the estimated cost of the delivery is Rs. 40,000. The truck drivers cannot approach banks to raise working capital loans to fund this delivery as they usually do not have the requisite documents. Additionally, small delivery orders do not fit into the asset criteria even if banks can fund certain working capital loans based on asset criteria. To get funds for making the delivery, the truck drivers end up approaching money lenders who charge exorbitant interest rates and only provide the sum after deducting the interest amount. So, the truck driver starts with a disadvantage. To add to his troubles, the clients always delay payments, putting them in a vicious circle of debts and working capital deficits.

Automation, therefore, expedites the process and makes it efficient.

Technological innovations are enabling information gaps to be filled:

The traditional models and supply chain processes are ridden with inefficiencies, hefty costs and bottlenecks that permeate from severe information silos, poor visibility and heavy leakages.

Suman Bose explained this with the help of the example of a supply chain startup in Punjab that solving the twin problems of the excessive use of subsidized fertilizers and pesticides and resulting losses to the government. Distributors get fertilizer subsidies on a per kg basis and so they sold excessive amounts to farmers by fudging the data. Farmers, in turn, excessively used these and caused soil quality degradation and water pollution. So, the startup engages in soil testing at a satellite level and ground level, estimating the quantity and quality of pesticides and fertilizers that are to be used on that particular piece of land. By linking this with the Government data, it helped prevent fudging of data (as one can fudge the ground level tests but cannot fudge the satellite level tests) and saving the Government from losses and leakages.

Mass customization and frugality will be made possible

Frugality comes from greater visibility – tying up the loose ends of existing information while not losing business lucrativeness.

We constantly keep hearing how the multitude of changes in the supply chain space has led to the coming in of more organized players as well as startups with new business models, resulting in large scale transformation on the service provider- and corporate-side.

Ashutosh Mayank, VP at Lumis Partners interviewed one of the SCL mentors, Neeraj Bansal, to get his perspective on the logistics space and how and why it has transformed the way it has in the past 5 years. Neeraj Bansal is a digital transformation leader with over 20 years of experience in helping leading organizations take the digital transformation path.

Here are the key takeaways from the interview.

On-ground changes that have happened in the last 5 years in the supply chain space

The biggest challenges in the supply chain industry in the past decades have been reliability, speed and efficiency of the service. With the accelerated growth of e-commerce, food delivery, cab services and other service providers who are giving same-day and next-day delivery, clear benchmarks have been set. This has ushered in a behavioural shift in how customers expect goods across industries to be delivered which, in turn, has put indirect pressure on all brands to fulfil the service at the same speed even if they are not an e-commerce or grocery delivery chain.

The second fundamental change is the bringing in of technology into the supply chain space. According to Neeraj, supply chain is one of the most underinvested industries in terms of technology.

In cases where they could not build solutions themselves owing to a lack of expertise or resources, they started looking towards third parties such as software solution providers.

There are also regulatory changes; the major ones being GST implementation and e-way billing. Earlier, there was scope to play around depending upon the tax structures in different states. For instance, the mobile phone industry set up warehouses in places where the taxes were lowest. With the differential tax structures gone, now these players are looking at rationalizing their warehouses, infrastructure, etc. Building a GST infrastructure has taken time, but it is definitely beneficial, and its full impact will be seen in the next 3-5 years.

Changes in corporate engagement with supply chain startups

Another issue is that large organizations which have been running traditional businesses do not have the capability to build anything on the tech front.

Increasing willingness amongst large corporates to look at innovations on the ground rather than looking at their own requirements

The traditional industry that used to work with single ERPs where large consulting firms worked on multi-year projects and integration teams built on top of these platforms in a never-ending process is becoming obsolete now. The fundamental change is that everything is moving to the cloud now, where it is easy to manage, share, etc. and on which large infrastructure investments are not needed. With the shift to the cloud, it is easy for multiple partners and niche players to come in and collaborate to build/ operate your solution.

Even though large organizations are good when you are looking at enterprise-scale systems, there hasn’t been much innovation happening in these large organizations in the logistics space. On the other hand,

New happenings in the trucking space

The transportation industry is so big in India that whatever effort is being taken is still a drop in the ocean. Currently, there are large organized players entering the market trying to use technology to streamline their operations and the efficiency, speed, etc. of the services delivered necessitated by the needs of the business – the customers who want to deliver at the same speed to their end-customers.

The whole value chain is seeing innovations at the moment, but these are happening in buckets with some focusing on the first mile, some on the last-mile, some on warehousing and so on. There are only a few players trying to innovate the whole value chain.

From the brand perspective, they do not see the first mile, last mile, warehousing, etc. as different things. They want one integrated solution where the logistics between the pickup from the brand to the delivery to the end-customer should be “predictably boring”.