In Conversation With Swarup Bose

1. It's been a year since the vaccination drive began in India. In 2022, and the near future, booster shots are needed to ensure people are immunized, driving more demand for vaccine delivery. How are you currently working with the vaccine manufacturers for vaccine distribution?

Vaccines are particularly temperature sensitive products and are challenging to transport as minor temperature excursions can render the entire shipment unviable. Celsius used a technology-based approach to all our services. We use refrigerated vehicles to transport all consignments to ensure alterations in the external environment do not affect the shipment. Celcius also deploys IoT-based Temperature Measurement Devices (TMD), door sensors, temperature sensors and GPS devices to track and monitor vaccines throughout their journey. Tese IoT devices send regular alerts and updates if the temperature changes, making it easy to identify issues and remediate them. We also use phase change material (PCM) to insulate the products as they absorb external heat and maintain the optimal temperature of the vaccines.

Even when the products are in storage warehouses, we ensure that each storage unit has a temperature sensor that is linked to an AI and IoT-based device, monitoring the temperature of the product.

For instance, one of our clients, Reliance, was to distribute vaccines received in bulk from the Serum Institute of India. We connected them with several large and medium-size transporters to ensure the shipments reached their warehouse in Mumbai. Once the vaccines are ready to be shipped to hospitals, we get Reliance in touch with transporters who ship to the location and can provide a fleet size as per their requirements.

2. What are the challenges faced with transportation of pharmaceutical products?

The lack of infrastructure and collaboration are two major challenges for the Indian cold chain industry. Collaboration and convergence of cold chain components is critical, especially for pharmaceutical products. Meeting this goal requires the sector to establish an end-to-end link between suppliers and tier-III cities and surrounding areas without any fragmentation in between.

One of the major challenges we faced during the initial vaccine distribution, was procuring reefer vehicles that were compliant with the GDP guidelines for storage and distribution. We realized early on that the large number of existing vehicles could be upgraded with the latest IoT devices and tracking systems, making them GDP compliant. We worked on upgrading the vehicles in the initial months, to create a strong base of GDP-compliant vehicles for last mile distribution of vaccines across 10 cities in India, and even to the remote areas surrounding those cities. Over the last six months, we have scaled our operations and are now capable of distributing vaccines to the last mile across 22 cities across the country, and the primary and secondary movement of vaccines across 75 cities.

This ties into our objective of supporting regional and local transporters. We’ve launched the Vahan Vikas Yojana program, which provides income schemes and technical support to small-scale local transporters, quarterly payouts of additional profits and backend support for training, operation, collections and mechanical support. We aim to encourage more people from across the country to venture into the cold supply chain industry and support the country’s need for pharmaceuticals and other cold chain products.

3. Which sector does Celcius cater to the most and which is the fastest growing sector that needs cold chain logistics?

We have customers across the dairy, fruits, vegetables, seafood, meat, frozen foods and pharmaceutical sectors. We find there is great scope for the fruits and vegetables segment. This sector still largely depends on non-temperature controlled vehicles for transportation of their commodities and this generates large amounts of waste. A structured cold chain can reduce food waste to a great extent.

4. What are the major trends and developments affecting the cold chain sector and how is Celcius responding to the demand?

Considering the demands of efficient vaccine disbursal, its storage and distribution still remains a major challenge. The lack of collaboration between transporters, shippers and suppliers create hurdles. Besides, monitoring the shipment and the vehicle in transit and keeping a record of all the data requires a structured approach and technology is the solution to these challenges. Through our SaaS-based platform, we are enabling various entities involved in the cold chain process to collaborate seamlessly. IoT and thermal mapping is helping ensure the viability of shipments. With technology we are able to streamline the cold chain process right from the storage to the point of administration of the vaccines.

5. What are your most recent product/technology innovations that are critical for vaccine disbursal?

We recently launched an Android application for drivers. The app enables them to access the live location of loading and unloading. The app is directly linked to our main system, where we book and execute the entire trip from start to finish. Drivers can also report the status of their trip through the app. For instance, once they unload the vehicle, they can upload proof of delivery directly to our system. The process of paying drivers can also be carried out seamlessly. The app is presently available in English but we are developing a counterpart in Hindi and we will also add other regional languages in the future.

6. With the latest round of funding, what is Celcius' strategy to bridge the gap in supply-chain distribution channels?

In April this year, we raised $4.5 million in a bridge funding round led by Mumbai Angels, Supply Chain Labs, Endurance Capital, VCats, Keiretsu Forum, Huddle, EVAN and others.

Our strategy is innovation and service with hard work and patience. We’ve developed an ecosystem that ensures that 99% of our deliveries are on time. We account for the transportation of perishable cargo throughout the transit and our response time is limited to 2 hours in case of breakdowns. This translates to better user experience and bridges the gaps in cold chain structuring and has been the driving force behind our success.

Since our launch in November 2020, we have on-boarded 3500 vehicles, 107 cold storage facilities, increased operations in over 300 cities, grown 20 times more than our initial prediction. We also have a tie-ups with finance institutions like Shriram Transport and

Finance Company and with OEMs like Ashok Leyland and Tata, which are enabling agile operations.

We aim to scale up and expand our reach to over 500 cities and create India’s largest delivery network. The services we offer will cover everything from primary movement to last mile distribution, and plan to expand our software solution from transaction-based to a completely integrated TMS (Transportation Management System) and WMS (Warehouse Management System). This change will further help us create a holistic end-to-end supply chain solution for the cold chain network.