An interview with Mr. Ramesh Babu, Managing Director, Seashell Logistics
What are the milestones achieved under your leadership?
We are one of the reputed shipping companies in India with 27 branches spread over all parts of the country offering end to end logistics services to all kinds of industries exports and imports. We offer our services for small cargo of few kgs to full vessel of 1 lakh tons.
We are the service partners for major blue chip and large conglomerate companies in India. Our continuous focus on timely delivery and quality service makes us preferred choice for our customers. Our customers faith on us helped us to achieve turnover of Rs 450 crore in FY 2018-19 and we are well on path to cross Rs 500 crore milestone in FY 2019-20.
On recently launched services…
We provide services to all kinds of industries from construction, agricultural exporters, chemical, seafood exports, steel, power, cement etc but our focus is on construction industry. We have played a key role in offering services for the infrastructure industry which includes and not limited to road construction, metro, irrigation projects, power generation/distribution projects, air ports, seaports, dedicated freight corridor, industrial corridor, urban water distribution and long list …. We provide services to OEM manufacturers or to the construction companies in getting construction equipment of all sizes and capacities from any part of the world to the designated project site where the equipment is required. We have expertise in handling heavy lifts upto 1,200 tons of single piece and single move. Most of the EPC contractors are our clients. We offer these services for Import & Export No matter the size, location and nature of the machinery and construction equipment we can be the choice for handling the shipping/logistics needs.
Quality and pricing – how will you balance this equation?
Quality and pricing balance is always tricky but our customers from construction industry always look for quality and prompt services. For construction industry getting machines on time is the most important factor in running their project smoothly. The critical machinery is always on make to order basis and substitution due to poor quality will cost the project huge and so compromising on the quality standards is the last thing to be thought. So our focus is always on quality and timely delivery while ensuring that the price meets customer expectation and the budgets.
Your viewpoint on the market demand dynamics.
As we all know there is slowdown in almost every industry and Q2 GDP data released by government just confirmed this. From Indian perspective, we feel this is temporary, with the population of what we are and with the current standard of living and technology penetration, we see there may be sudden surge of demand after the end of current international trade disputes. B2B businesses are in transformation mode and facing challenges on the drastic increase in expectations due to B2C E-Commerce. There are lot of competitors in logistics space and business is down which means there will be lot of pressure on margins. Current period will be very difficult for small companies and we see consolidation in this sector. This slowdown will force government to spend more on infrastructure to push growth, which will help construction industry and in turn help logistics companies like us. Also there is lot of investment coming in warehouse space because of the boom in E-Commerce Industry.
What are the problems that are proving as stumbling blocks for the growth?
There are lots of stumbling blocks for infra sector like land acquisition and environment clearance. Last few governments have given lot of focus on infra and we can see it in shape of better highways and expressways across India. In recent times one major issue is that banks not giving loans to this sector because of fear of NPA. Recent failure of NBFC associated with infrastructure make banks cautious of giving funds which makes financial closure of project difficult. Government should solve land acquisition and environment clearance on timely basis and ensure that the bank should come forward to fund those projects.
How well equipped are you to make deeper inroads into the market?
We are fast adopting company having qualified and experienced employees. We have spread our services basket in all kind of industries. With Infrastructure we have deep inroads and further enhancing the same. We carry the brand name in the infra industry.
Our presence across India and our experienced employees makes us first choice for companies looking for Export/ Import of equipment of any size. We have worked for all infra companies at some point of time. We have been working on many overseas projects and we see there is opportunity for us to go to move on forward integration basis the project needs.
Despite slowdown in economy our company is growing at healthy rate and will continue to grow like that.