Following a hugely successful inauguration on Thursday, the second day of the 45th ACAAI Convention began with an electrifying business session on ‘Logistics in India – Air Freight’ chaired by Mr Sunil Arora, President, ACAAI.
The distinguished panellists of the session were Dr Anil Chinnabhandar, Senior Vice President – SCM and Planning, Landmark Group; Keshav Tanna, Director, Links Forwarders Pvt Ltd; Vijay Sharma, Head – Cargo Business, Delhi International Airport and Tadesse Tilahun, Regional Director, Indian Sub-continent, Ethiopian Airlines.
Dr Chinnabhandar in his engaging address touched upon a scenario that has become a reality in an e-commerce supply chain. He said, “In the e-commerce world, today my customer is not a king, but she’s a queen who demands delivery at the doorstep. The queen gets to decide how a retail or an omnichannel supply chain should run. As there is a zero-cost return policy, she might order multiple sizes of apparels and then finally choose one while returning the rest of them.”
Mr Tanna gave a glimpse of the future of the air cargo industry in his address and highlighted some of the facilities will become automated by the year 2030. Mr Tanna also threw light on how the future of drone deliveries in India will look like.
Vijay Sharma highlighted the two key enablers for air cargo movement in the future: ‘Trustworthiness’ and ‘Predictability’. He urged the fraternity to come together in order to increase the percentage of cargo transported by air. “We should look forward to increasing the share of the pie and adopt a collaborative approach. It’s time to switch from red ocean strategy to blue ocean strategy.”
For the very first time, the delegates at the ACAAI convention witnessed a dedicated session on the sea freight business. The session on ‘Logistics in India – Sea freight’ was chaired by Mr TA Varghese, Immediate Past President, ACAAI which saw the participation of Krishna Kumar, SVP, MSC Agency; Mark Fernandes, Partner, Sylvester & Co; Sachu Simon, CEO-Asia Pacific, ECU Worldwide and Capt. Dinesh Gautama, CEO, Navkar CFS.
Krishna Kumar, in his address, took the audience through the different phase of evolution of containerisation in India and the growth of the containerized shipping sector in India. Capt. Dinesh Gautama gave a brief and interesting description of CFS activities in India. Mr Fernandes shared insights on reducing dwell time at ports, enhancing port facility and prevailing of system driven process in his presentation.
The third session ‘Business and beyond’ was chaired by Jaydeep Raha, Managing Committee Member, ACAAI and the session brought leaders of diversified industries on the stage.
In the session, Hassan Sabahudheen, CEO, Ciber Diitia Consultants talked in detail on what precautionary measures companies should take to avoid cyber-security threats.
Jatin Pore, Partner of DSK Legal, Advocates and Solicitors talked on the types of available Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) process of solving business disputes and explained the advantages of adopting ADR.
Kyle Yokeum, Director, Freight Deadbeats gave tips to prevent bad debts in the industry.
The second day of the ACAAI Convention concluded with a very knowledgeable business session named ‘Gyaan Gurus’ which brought together the collective experience of 500 years on the stage. Chaired by Sam Katgara, Past President & Member, Board of Advisor, ACAAI, this interactive session witnessed the participation of Keshav Tanna, Mark Fernandes, Dr. Anil Chinnabhandar, Vipin Vohra, Capt Dinesh Gautama, Anand Didwania, Yashpal Sharma, Cyrus Katgara, TA Varghese, Sunil Arora, Jatin Pore and Dr Mita Dixit.
