Digitization of Shipping Industry in India.

Global trade started in the days of Silk Route has progressed massively over the last few decades. Everything around us is either imported from elsewhere, and the excess production in our country is exported elsewhere. Logistics costs in India accounts for 14% of GDP, while elsewhere in the advanced countries it is about 8–10% of the total costs.

We have had first hand experiences of the inefficiencies in the logistics industry. Being friends with the new generation shippers,(who ruined our annual vacation, over a shipment which took unexpected twists and turns), we couldn’t take it NO for an answer and researched the solutions for it.

Two main problems plague Indian Ocean logistics industry- transparency & reliability. Transparency of rates, information about the cargo, shipment updates etc. Reliability is grey area - since the shipment as a whole cannot be directly controlled by any single entity – lot of stakeholders are involved, and each want to push the blame to the other.

Enter, Shipwaves in 2015 — with our vision to empower shippers to seamlessly transact with each other in the global trade #MakeInIndia. All our solutions were built on the understanding of the shipments.

First step we built internal tools to help our sales guys to quote to our customers all in transparent rates. For this we had to digitize all contracted rates of all lines, different file types, different formats, different terms etc. It was a massive exercise but worth the effort! End result — we had all the contracted rates from all major shipping lines from various ports in India ONLINE. First in India to do so way back early 2016.

Next step we “open sourced” all-in rates to all our customers to check it for themselves. Our customers just loved this. They could see the rates sitting in their offices, without lifting the phone and speaking to any freight forwarder/service provider.

For an industry slow to adopt technology and giving a quote takes an average of 4 days, we have had instances, where one of our customers mentioned that he checked our instant freight estimator while pricing for a customer at night, and secured the business by the morning. Thats the power of technology behind Shipwaves. We empower shippers to expedite their global trade.

Next, with our self service shipment page, customers can control the information which is sent to shipping lines for Bill of Lading, or uploading documents like packaging instructions, buyer invoice, etc — simple way to empower shippers instead of exchanging tons of emails for as simple as shipping instructions!

Our tracking notifications and world class advanced tracking just gives the power to every shipper/consignee to get transparent updates independently of the shipping lines via a combination of in house updates, port, shipping lines, satellite etc.

Again, we believe software alone, no matter how awesome, won’t solve all logistics problems. Our team of logistics experts from the industry coupled with the software is the backbone for the new generation of shippers experiencing a totally refreshing twist to logistics.