In pulling off the world’s largest vaccine inoculation drive, Kool-ex Cold Chain-the first transporter in India to ferry the first batch of the long-awaited Covid-19 vaccine-has played a formidable role in the entire vaccine transit movement of India. Rahul Agarwal, Managing Director, Kool-ex Cold Chain walks us through the toil and the triumph of the vaccine drive and how the little-known logistics company has emerged as the transporter of choice for pharma companies.
- What steps has Kool-ex taken to remodel tracking & accountability in the shipping of goods from source to consumption?
Kool-ex has always been a leader in adoption of the best in class technology and was the first to offer real time track and trace to its clients in 2012 for its cold chain movements across India. In fact prior to this offering, most temperature traceability was dependent on a single off line data logger. Kool-ex began its cold chain journey by offering 3 real time temperature sensors as well as 2 door sensors to record and track door openings in real time. Over the years we constantly keep upgrading the systems and technologies to ensure best practices, highest levels of accountability and a rich customer experience.
- What are the challenges that you have faced in transporting 1.1 crore doses of Covishield vaccine across the corners of India?
There was tremendous media pressure & our people and vehicles had to face a barrage of questions. However, there was tremendous support from the vaccine suppliers as well as the Government agencies to ensure smooth movement of vehicles along with priority right of way. This made the overall task comfortable. There was a lot of pressure on timelines and our drivers and staff were literally working overtime in the initial period of rollout in January.
- What trends do you foresee in terms of Cold chain infrastructure that has the potential to place India among the developed nations?
India being the pharmacy to the world needs to upgrade it storage and transportation infrastructure to a large extent, to ensure GDP compliant standards, which helps maintain product efficacy. Kool-ex intends to play a vital role in this upgradation process and will shortly roll out large, compliant, temperature-controlled pharma storage centers
- What is your strategy of ensuring an unbroken cold chain and ensuring seamless last mile delivery?
In order to maintain an unbroken cold chain and seamless last mile delivery, the adoption of the right technology and infrastructure upgradation is a must. Technologies such as Blockchain need to be customised and adopted to ensure seamless data flow alongwith the upgradation of infrastructure to support the same.
This is an abridged version. To read the full interview, click here.
