Exclusive interview with Ashish Chadha, CEO, XPDEL APAC

Ashish Chadha, CEO, XPDEL APAC

Ashish Chadha has been a successful entrepreneur, since the age of twenty-one, in various verticals with technology driven products and services that includes retail, hospitality, content management, digital marketing, and eCommerce supply chain.

Ashish now serves as the CEO and Co-founder XPDEL APAC. He is also part of the senior leadership team at Advatix, XPDEL’s sister company, as the Global CIO and APAC CEO. Ashish also oversees the global logistics command center based in Gurgaon, India.

Ashish has over two decades of experience in leading teams that develop technologies for business growth. Amongst his entrepreneurial successes is Brainworks Technologies that he started in 2000 that provides web-based solutions, and businesses in retail, fashion and food. His Brainworks team has developed many platforms and solutions for global companies based in the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Customers include Government of India, Belgium Satellite Services, Airtel, Hyundai, Nokia, BNP Paribas, Cheetah Software Systems, Edelweiss, and many more.

Ashish is a technologist, a successful entrepreneur, a tenacious business developer, and a strong people’s leader. He has developed a strong team at XPDEL that is expanding the business across Asia Pacific region.

In a recent interaction with Urban Transport News, Ashish shares his views on XPDEL's strategy and future of logistics industry.

Please tell us about your professional journey. What sparked you to establish XPDEL?

We began Advatix in the US back in 2018, and it was from there that XPDEL was subsequently born. Our company initially began with consultancy, after which we established technology for logistics and transportation (from middle mile to multi-model last-mile, last-mile delivery).

The idea to develop some agile technology solutions in India came from one of the company's partners, Manish, who holds strong working experience with global players like Amazon and FedEx.

In 2018, we started by providing consultancy to logistic organisations and while using a transport management system, we discovered the largest gap in the Asian countries was inventory rather than transportation. Therefore, by 2019, we had switched from consulting to developing custom software depending on the challenges our enterprise client was witnessing with respect to inventory, and we had also begun the process of going digital. These custom software / products became highly successful in the US markets as it started to fill in the major gaps in the inventory management

XPDEL was established in the United States in 2020 when we started to outsource our technology products to enterprises. Today, we have integrated more than 30 carriers and have 11 fulfilment centres in the US and operating in three major markets in India.

Please highlight some salient features of XPDEL? How is it different from other 3PLs?

Consumers expect accurate orders and on-time delivery, and XPDEL enables the brands to deliver products timely to its customers via deploying the latest technologies, live visibility, and round-the-clock customer support. XPDEL offers Fulfilment, inventory management and shipping solutions for brands across various sectors including ecommerce, retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, shipping and transport companies and we have clients across categories like fashion, lifestyle, wellness, food and groceries.

XPDEL has its own in-house built technology by Advatix,a sister concern of XPDEL, designed by industry veterans. Company’s intelligent fulfilment and logistics execution platforms enable merchants and retailers with a single view of their businesses (can we replace it with Supply chain) across all their sales channels, products, inventory, orders, and shipments, which allow them to leverage analytics and reporting to run their businesses effectively. With our global team based in India and US, we provide scalability on demand, multi-channel support, business continuity and risk management amidst uncertainties.

In India, the major pain point is that generally the inventory is held by distributors, who do not have the access to live dashboards and cannot help the retailers with real-time visibility. However, at XPDEL, we enable distributors and retailers with live visibility and other such technology to offer world-class supply chain and logistics solutions to our customers and that’s what makes XPDEL different from other logistics platforms.

What are your strategies to capture the Logistics Industry? What is your quality control and customer support policy?

Our strategy is to provide a world-class customer experience to our client’s customers. Providing world-class experience and running efficient operations are the backbone of e-commerce business and to achieve that, the supply chain operations need to be strong. The orders must be delivered on promised timelines while keeping the customer always informed about product dispatch or deviation. Most e-commerce companies are eagerly waiting to get that solution in a cost-effective way and XPDEL has leveraged industrial technology to provide such solutions to its patrons. Hence, our strategy will be to capture the market with one-of-its-kind value-added services that are not being provided currently by most of the 3PLs or shipping solution providers.

We have global standards to manage the quality check. The process is built on the poka-yoke technique and broadly on lean sigma principles both inside and outside the 4 walls of our fulfilment centres.  Our core value is customer-centricity, and we ensure that our customers get all the necessary visibility and tracking of their inventory and orders. We also have a global Control & Command centre in India & US which provides 24x7 support to our customers & their customers.

How do you manage cross-border logistics services? Please tell us about your global presence.

The global logistics services are provided by our different partners. Our focus is on fulfilment in North America, Latin America and India along with providing shipping solutions for both B2B and D2C deliveries both inside a country and across the border.

What is your opinion on the Govt. of India's National Logistics Policy? How will this policy help you to run your business smoothly? Any disadvantages of this policy?

Initially, National Logistics Policy (NLP), was launched to establish a comprehensive plan to enhance the entire logistics ecosystem with a couple of primary visions. The first is to lower India's logistics costs by 5% of GDP during the following five years. I believe NPL will help our business by providing seamlessly integrated multiple modes of transportation by leveraging technology and processes. It will streamline the customs procedures and discussions while encouraging the use of multimodal transportation, and connect XPDEL with a number of vendors to support cost-effective logistical operations.

We would be closely observing the execution of this policy and to further adapt to the new policies by upgrading our services.

What is the future of the technology-enabled Logistics Industry?

The enormous logistics industry in India contributes over 14% of the country's GDP and is projected to increase from its current level to $380 billion by 2025. The supply chain and logistics industry, which is well recognised for its intensive use of manual processes and enormous volumes of data stored in numerous formats and locations, stands to gain the most from a future-enabled technology. And some of the newer technology platforms are excelling at this, which has a direct impact on the enormous growth of the logistics sector. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of digital technology has been rising, and it is still having an impact on everything from e-commerce to the global supply chain.

As well the industry is trying to harness the power of AI to make supply chains more robust & scalable. From utilizing AI to update ETA, and generate predictive analytics to avoid any exceptions to automate document processing, the industry is finding more and more use cases of AI in our industry.

At the same time, we would see more and more use of technologies like drones & IOT to transform transportation in India. This will lead to a reduction in transport time & better tracking of the fleet.

What is your feedback on the Urban Transport News website and its publications?

Urban Transport News and its publications have always been one of the most important news-fed sources for its viewers and readers providing real and exact news for the urban transport and logistics industry.