Air Express Riding High On E-commerce

The exponential growth in e-commerce has propelled air express industry to shift from an absolute B2B focus to also addressing B2Crelated requirements. With now customer expectations raised by several notches, the need of the hour is to fine tune government policies and infrastructure with the business requirements to ensure an integrated supply chain.

- Shreya Bhattacharya

How often do we manage to order something online and not think twice about it before it gets delivered to our doorsteps? The clock starts ticking for an impulsive customer right from the moment he or she clicks on the order button.

Surely, the wave of e-commerce is riding high in India’s commercial landscape, while also offering a giant leap to the logistics segment. It’s a race not only for the customer but for the manufacturers as well as the express industry for which speed to market is of crucial importance for garnering sales across regions, meeting customer expectations and be competitive. Approximately 10 percent of the shipments carried by some of the express companies are B to C shipments. There are also companies who specialise only in carrying B to C shipments.

By creating an integrated door-to-door linkage across domestic and international regions, the express industry serves the need for time sensitive logistics services. The added advantage is the availability of real time shipment tracking facilities.

According to an ASSOCHAM study, about 69 million consumers purchased online in 2016, which is expected to cross 100 million by 2017 with the rise of digital natives, better infrastructure in terms of logistics, broadband and internet-ready devices to fuel the demand in e-commerce. The e-retail market is likely to jump 65 percent on year in 2018.

“The year 2017 will see large scale growth in the Indian e-commerce sector with increased participation from people across the country. This industry will continue to drive more employment opportunities and contribute towards creating more entrepreneurs through the e-commerce marketplace model,” says the ASSOCHAM-Resurgent India study.