Deccan 360 branch out in logistics with stake holder Reliance Industries

Reliance Industries' (RIL) retail arm will support air cargo firm Deccan 360 by building a central warehouse at its base in Nagpur and opening 350 outlets of Reliance Retail over the next three months following the company's buying stake in the airline.

RIL strategic investment aim is to gain a dedicated cargo service with the airline gaining IT automation, project management and retail network and following finalising of agreement a share of captive clients.

"Though we are yet to finalise the areas of cooperation (with RIL), we are all set to scale up our network. My idea is to have presence in all taluka headquarters of the country in the next five years. We want to be a ubiquitous end-to-end cargo company," said founder G R Gopinath in a Livemint Wall Street Journal.

The support from the investment company came after a shuffling of management with expatriate employees let go and hiring former US-based UPS managing director of India Thomas Matthew to head Deccan 360 as president and H L Rikhye as COO for aviation previously CEO of SriLankan Airlines and Vikram Mansukhani, UPS India's former express division head to COO for the small parcel division.

"Reliance Industries will get access to the huge domestic air cargo network of Deccan 360 while the airline would get access to a captive client base, including Reliance Industries and Reliance Retail. Deccan 360 will also get a much-needed fund infusion to scale up across the country," said one of India's leading supply chain consultancy firm Logistics Consulting Asia.

However sceptics see Deccan 360 business model as shaky compared to competitors Blue Dart Express and First Flight Couriers boasting solid office bases rather than a hub and spoke distribution model while the partnership with Reliance Industries is unsound with the retail arm holding little expertise in the logistics sector.

However the founder of Deccan 360 is adamant he is not a direct competitor of these airlines as he is hoping to build an ubiquitous end-to-end cargo company through a surface transport network.

"While Blue Dart is trying to link India to the rest of the world, I am trying to link India to India and then the rest of the world. We have land and buildings at 17 airports and 1,000 trucks running under the Deccan 360 brand," he said with links to rail, roads, ports, airports and special economic zones.
(Source:www.schednet.com)