DHL, part of German Deutsche Post and leading logistics company is now eying Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) along with life sciences, pharmaceuticals and healthcare to expand its business.
The company has recently opened its service centre facility in Pune and looking forward to further invest in infrastructure. This facility has a capacity to handle a volume of over 20,000 shipments per month. Commenting on this Malcolm Monteiro, CEO, South Asia, DHL said, "SMEs are spreading into tier II and III cities and towns, and DHL would connect with them to provide them logistic and courier services. Our aim is to add value to the SMEs. In the last six months, we have opened eight new national service centres in places such as Pune, Noida and Kanpur where our business is growing rapidly in addition to the existing 27 national centres."
He added, " Earlier garment and fashion were the challenging areas for us. But, now we have recovered the segment. We are now focusing sectors like life sciences, pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Pune is the second largest city and a very important auto and IT hub of Maharashtra. We have witnessed a steady and strong growth in business and have a very strong foothold in Pune and the other surrounding key cities including Mumbai, Aurangabad, Ahmednagar and Nashik as the company continues to invest in infrastructure.”
The company has plans to expand business in Tier-II cities like Jabalpur, Solapur, Satara and Kanpur. It will also open 25 new retail centres by the end of calendar year 2012 to take the existing number to 500. By end of 2015, it will have 800 retail centres.
In 2011, DHL Express handled nearly nine million international shipments for India. DHL Express, DHL Global Forwarding, DHL Supply Chain and Blue Dart Express are part of the group business in the country.
DHL has a 40 per cent market share in India and it mainly competes with global logistics companies like Fedex and UPS in the country.