Navata to beef up presence in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka

Vijayawada-based Navata Road Transport, a pioneer in regular goods and parcel carrier service since 1982, is planning to open 100 more branches in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka this year to cover the length and breadth of the two states.

The transport company, which at present has 702 branches in south India with a fleet of over 350 trucks, operates 548 branches in Andhra Pradesh, 101 branches in Karnataka, 51 branches in Tamil Nadu and two branches in Pondicherry.

Navata, in association with V-Trans India, also transports goods to 81 towns in Gujarat, 25 towns in Maharashtra and to the Union territories of Daman, Dadra Nagar and Silavassa.

The firm, an Indian Banks' Association (IBA) approved transport operator, was the first to carry goods to almost all the remote points in Andhra Pradesh.

Speaking to Business Standard, P Koteswara Rao, managing director of Navata Road Transport, said: "Navata, on an average, transports 2.6 lakh consignments a month, a 10 per cent increase over last fiscal's monthly average, with complaints rate standing at an insignificant minimal of 0.001 per cent. The company owns a truck body-building unit and a workshop for repairs with inbuilt software. The group also runs PSC Bose Automobile with a capacity to repair 20 heavy vehicles a day with latest technology, Prabhat Automobiles, an auto spare parts shop, and a few petrol filling stations in Visakhapatnam. We also took over MRF's retread unit in Vizag and re-named it as PSB Industries."

"Service dominates business in Navata. Hence it enjoys patronage from almost all the big and reputed companies in every sector in the country. Its massive network of branches, sticking strictly to delivery schedules (99 per cent), enables customers to supply and make available their products even in distant and remote villages. With a direct workforce of 2,200 and indirect workforce of 7,500, the company carries goods to all villages with a population of 10,000 in Andhra Pradesh," Rao said.

He said that Navata continued its services at branches in some routes though they had not been lucrative just to eliminate the middleman's role and to protect customers' interests.

The Parvathaneni Subhash Chandra Bose Trust, named after Navata founder Mechanic Bose, runs a Rs 20-lakh modern, model and free driving school, near Vijayawada.

The school turns out hundreds of new generation of highly-disciplined and safety-conscious expert drivers, trained in yoga, protection of environment and fuel-saving with the help of high-tech audio and video teaching methods and equipment, library, cut models and model traffic signals. The group's free clinic in Autonagar provides medical attention to over one lakh workers in Autonagar.