Could you tell our readers something about your company?
Tushar Jani: Our group is established in 1896. Our major interest is in movement of cargo with focus on processing cargo. Currently we are in process of building infrastructure of processing cargo at various airports and ports in India.

Indian SMEs are always facing high logistics costs while trading their goods and services. What should be done to mitigate the increasing costs?
Tushar Jani: The logistic industry is highly fragmented and being operated by small companies, hence there is no economy of scale available to the end user. The high logistic cost is due to processing of documents related to the movement of cargo and infrastructure bottleneck. In fact, the transportation cost within logistic cost in India is just 1.8% being lowest in the world. It is only the inventory cost is high because of entry tax  rules and VAT rules.

As we know that poor supply chain is hampering growth of the country especially in foreign trade. What do you suggest to improve the condition of our port infrastructure?
Tushar Jani: The port infrastructure is adequate for the growth and the future projects will provide necessary port capacity. But the real challenge is the connectivity to the port. If we do not archive those plan of connectivity country's GDP growth will get impacted. Projects like DFC will help but it must be implemented on war foot level.

Could you highlight any strategy which you have implemented and have been useful to develop the supply chain?
Tushar Jani: The hub and spoke we had developed in BLUE DART has revolutionise the domestic industry where by today express parcel are delivered within twenty four to forty eight hour on pan India basis.

What kind of value addition is required for small and medium enterprises in the logistics business?
Tushar Jani: SMEs require potential inventory management, labelling, co-packing, and distribution.

What kind of marketing is required to maximize customer satisfaction while minimizing costs in the logistics sector?
Tushar Jani: The best marketing for logistic service provider is word to mouth publicity from satisfied customer. The second biggest tool for service provider is knowledge sharing with their customer.

How much growth in investment has taken place as of now for the development of port infrastructure?
Tushar Jani:  I do not have exact figure but in the last year five year plan it must be in the region of six to ten thousand crore but private sector must have spent more then government.

Is it necessary of Indian logistics sector to adopt techniques used in the western countries? Do you think right benchmarking is a must?
Tushar Jani: The technology is answer to efficient supply chain. We have to adopt western techniques suitable to our Indian need. India has huge challenge in implementing GST. We will need modern technology and know-how for this from western countries where it is being used for a long period of time.

(Namrata Kath Hazarika can be contacted at namratakh@tradeindia.com)