The Hindu Business Line : UPS to boost India focus

“UPS has identified China and India as important growth markets in the Asia-Pacific region. Work in China is almost complete while India is next in line,” Mr Pirojshaw Sarkari, Managing Director, UPS Jetair Express, told Business Line.

The company is looking at continued investment in the country to increase the “infrastructure spread” needed to tap the growing exports segment, he said.

UPS tied up with Mumbai-based AFL Express and Logistics last year which has helped it streamline connectivity between its international and tier II and III markets in India. “Our partnership is working very well with AFL. It has been a year now and we have been integrating our systems, which has given UPS access to 200 points and about 5,000 pin codes on which it operates in India,” he said.

The company has also spent significantly on the joint branding of AFL service centres which also hold the UPS logo. UPS has had teams coming from the US to train AFL manpower and they have had nearly 5,000 hours of training sessions, said Mr Sarkari.

Steps to beat the blues

However, with the slowdown hitting global economies, the company has also adopted some corrective measures to beat the blues. UPS is aggressively looking at consolidating its air network by realigning capacity in line with demand. It has also consolidated some districts and service centres.

“We have also launched two services. The first is Express and the other Expedite. When a customer has a despatch that needs to reach its destination within a stipulated time, we recommend Express and if it is not time-bound, he could choose Expedite which also comes in cheap,” he said. The price difference between the two is 25 per cent.

As for markets which UPS services from India, Mr Sarkari said that business on the US trade lane was not that buoyant while Europe and Asia were a lot better. The company has over 215 points of access across India (UPS JV-15, Light Brown (Jetair)-9 and AFL-191) and 1,031 employees. Its delivery fleet of 99 vehicles includes scooters, trucks and vans. UPS operates eight weekly flights serving five key airports in Mumbai, Chennai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Kochi with brokerage operations to 11 other cities.

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