Integrated logistics services provider, Mahindra Logistics Ltd is expanding its capacity in the Eastern and North Eastern (NE) region, focusing on warehouses, delivery stations, and express logistics. The company’s ‘Go East’ strategy envisages opening warehouses in key locations in eastern India, expanding its reach to 800 pin codes in the region and adding 100 more for last-mile delivery.
The company, which has put 1.5 million square feet warehousing capacity under various stages of construction in Western India in the last one year, says the eastern region also offers a good potential in e-commerce, quick commerce, and FMCG products, and has largely remained under-served by the logistics sector as a whole. It may be noted that the company plans to enhance warehousing capacity to 30 million square feet from 19 million square feet currently.
As a part of its ‘Go East’ policy, the company has already launched a large-scale warehouse in Guwahati. “Our big strategic shift has been the Go East programme. We have done a soft launch of a large warehouse facility in Guwahati a couple of months ago. We are installing customers and going live with customers there,” said Rampraveen Swaminathan, managing director and CEO, Mahindra logistics. The full site is expected to go live by the middle of the next month. The facility is 100% driven by renewable energy.
Next, it will soon have the first of the two mega warehouses in Kolkata. “In November, we'll go live with Kolkata, which is a four lakh square feet platinum certified facility. It is our first warehouse in Kolkata. The second one will come up in one and a half years,” said Swaminathan, adding that the third destination for warehousing foray in the eastern part of the country will be Agartala, followed by Bihar.
“Agartala will go live in two phases. Full site (1,40,000 square feet) will go live by March next year. We also are now in the process of expanding in Bihar. That's also a part of the big Go East plan. Patna will be live hopefully by summer next year. We're working on the site and different opportunities,” Swaminathan added.
Swaminathan says the eastern region is a very big market. “We think the potential is huge. It's a big market for automobiles for us. So, we are deepening in the East, not just in terms of warehousing, but we've expanded nearly 800 pin codes on express in the east. We are adding around 100 or 120 odd pin codes for last mile B2C last mile delivery,” he added.
