Pando aims to increase efficiencies in India’s USD 200 bn delivery ecosystem

Chennai

It is among the region’s first open-market digital delivery management platform that allows large, distributed businesses to take control of their supply-chain and optimise their deliveries.

Kashyap Deorah of Hypertrack, Girish Mathrubootham of Freshdesk, Nishant Rao of Sirion Labs (Ex-LinkedIn India MD), and P Balaji of Vodafone (Ex-Nokia, Sony Erickson India MD) are other investors in Pando, which was founded in Chennai by Nitin Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar.

The company is working on increasing efficiencies in India’s $200 bn delivery ecosystem through the introduction of advanced connectivity of and data sharing between devices, information systems, services and stakeholders.

Talking about the way forward in India’s burgeoning smart logistics market, Jayakrishnan, the CEO and Co-founder, tells us, “The SaaS ecosystem has been evolving over the past few years, vis-à-vis demand and supply. Two major changes we are seeing is the e-commerce space getting stronger and the change in GST and regulatory framework. Whenever a new industry comes into play, several associated industries come to the fore. Till today, it was the last headache of sorts to deal with. But today, there is a fundamental shift in the way large enterprises look at supply chain and logistics. The growth now demands for a consolidated platform where you can manage and scale your SCM operations.”

He adds, “We looked at large enterprises and their functions like HR, CRM, IT etc. All of them have grown leaps and bounds technology adoption wise. However, logistics is presently a networked function, and the systems that manage it are not. It is still a manual Excel sheet driven exercise, depending on WhatsApp, text messages and emails. We realised this was a white space where we could digitise, optimise, manage and scale the logistics operations.”

One of the country’s largest FMCG brands and a client of Pando’s had recently revealed that the company had saved close to 6 per cent in direct freight costs annually, thanks to having onboarded Pando’ smart logistics systems. And this was on a Rs 700 cr logistics circuit. Pando’s growing clientele comprises several Fortune 500 companies.