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Aim to have 25% share in Indian e-com cargo market: DHL E-commerce CEO

Logistics firm Blue Dart, part of the DHL Group, specialises in fast ground deliveries for e-commerce items

Pablo

Pablo Ciano said the second step involves

Deepak Patel

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This report has been updated  About 8 per cent of e-commerce (ecom) shipments in India are being handled by Blue Dart right now and the company aims to increase the share to about 25 per cent in the next five years, Pablo Ciano, Global CEO, DHL E-commerce, told Business Standard on Tuesday.  Logistics firm Blue Dart, a part of the DHL group, specialises in fast ground deliveries of e-commerce items.  Independent players that include Blue Dart handle approximately 6 million e-commerce shipments daily within India, while in-house operators such as Amazon manage about 8 million shipments per day.  "The new integrated facility in Bijwasan, Delhi, has the ability to process 200,000 shipments of e-commerce every day. And, that is only one example of the infrastructure that we are putting in place. We are going to continue growing and we're going to continue investing. So, our aim is to have approximately 20-25 per cent market share in the next five years," Ciano stated.  The Bijwasan facility was inaugurated on Tuesday.  "We are moving steadily towards that, and we have all the ingredients right. So, we're building infrastructure to be able to take their market, and we have a great team with a very high level of service quality," he mentioned.  Ciano detailed the various steps the company is taking to achieve the aim. He said that the Bijwasan facility is a "mid-level" one and in July this year, the company would be opening its "main hub" for surface transport within northern India. The "main hub" will handle just the ground shipments (and not air shipments) and it will be about 2.5 times bigger than the one in Bijwasan. "This is another example of how we are going to be able to expand capacities... such expansion is going on across the country," he said.  The DHL E-commerce CEO said the second step is the "heavy" investments being done in customer-facing technology, so that the delivery app thoroughly gives complete information to the sender as well as the receiver.  The third step is the expansion of the air capacity. "We're going to be modernising all our, or six of our eight freighters that we have today in India, and that will allow us to carry approximately 30-40 per cent more volume, because the new aircraft are going to be with wider body, and, therefore, we're going to be able to transport more cargo," Ciano noted.  Blue Dart has a total of eight planes — six B757, with each having an annual capacity of about 30,000 tonnes, and two B737, with each having an annual capacity of about 45,000 tonnes. Ciano said the capacity of the six B757 planes will be increased by about 50 per cent within the next three to five years and be brought to the level of B737 aircraft.  The fourth step, according to Ciano, will include launching an "export-deferred cross-border product" service for e-commerce within the next 12 months. "So today, our sister company DHL Express has an express-deferred cross-border product service. We will also be launching a similar service to connect India to the rest of the world," he mentioned.  Exporting a deferred cross-border product involves paying export duty for a product at a later date, usually within 60 days of the product leaving the country. The exporter must meet certain conditions to request a deferral. 

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First Published: Jan 14 2025 | 8:07 PM IST

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