Zipaworld to onboard 150 vendors in FY21 as it looks to scale up operations

Logistics e-mall services start-up Zipaworld plans to onboard about 150 vendors, including 40-45 from the overseas markets, by the end of ongoing fiscal as it looks to scale up its operations, its founder and chief executive Ambrish Kumar has said.

E-mall is a digital channel from where customers can shop and avail the requisite logistics products and services.

Set up last month, the digital platform caters to shippers, exporters, importers and other logistics customers. Currently, it has around 35 vendors from domestic and foreign markets.

"Our start-up was conceptualized this year during the pandemic with the idea to provide critical business solutions easily with the help of technology even to a manufacturer in any remote place in the country to carry out their cross-border trade," Kumar said.

He said 13 vendors from India have already signed in on the platform, besides some 20 vendors from the UK, Europe and the US, and added that the firm's focus is on broadening the platform by getting more vendors at the most competitive rates.

"We are keen on onboarding 40-45 from the international market and over 100 in India by March next year as we expand operations going forward," he said.

Internationally, the expansion will be into Far East and African regions, Kumar said.

Stating that Zipaworld aims to cater to SMEs and MSMEs, he said, ''Big companies already have their own vendors. With a number of small companies (in the logistics space) shut down in the wake of the pandemic, there is a lot of untapped demand (for digital) logistics services."

Stating that digitalisation will drive growth in the logistics industry, particularly at a time when the government is aiming to reduce logistics cost to 9 per cent of GDP from the current 14 per cent, Kumar said the domestic industry is expected to take 3-5 years time to switch to digital processes from manual.

"But slowly and gradually they are coming onboard," he said.

Kumar said Zipaworld expects to cover some 35-40 countries by the end of this fiscal from 17 at present. He said the company covers almost all 17,000 zip codes in India.