What defines success in the logistics industry? Is it creating smooth delivery experiences for customers, forging strong relationships with clients, or building partnerships with key stakeholders? Fship, a logistics tech company founded in 2021, has emerged as a leading logistics and fulfilment platform in the Indian D2C sector. In three years, the brand has onboarded hundreds of homegrown brands, built vital partnerships with the government-operated India Post, has experienced meteoric growth by leveraging AI-powered solutions, and is creating an ambitious roadmap for the future. 

Mukuund Hari, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Fship, traced the extraordinary journey of the organisation at a keynote speech at Brands of India’s D2C Carwaan – Jaipur. The event, powered by Fship, was held on December 13, 2024, at Radisson Hotel, Jaipur City Center, and highlighted the unique blend of age-old artistry and digital-age innovation that characterises many D2C brands in Jaipur. The evening was packed with fireside chats, panel discussions, a product showcase, and ended with a networking session. 

Building D2C partnerships, one business at a time

Hari began his keynote speech by talking about one of Fship’s greatest achievements: onboarding more 100 D2C brands in the last 2 years. He cited one brand, CarryPro, whose journey symbolises how Fship has built its relationship with D2C businesses. CarryPro, a Delhi-based bag brand, was working with a lacklustre delivery partner. Shipments were delayed, there was a breakdown in communication, notifications were not delivered, and customers were frantically trying to reach the brand on their website. When Fship came into the picture, its first order of business was finding out whether the brand was using the right courier partner or not. 

“The biggest challenge in D2C is that you should choose a partner who can deliver efficiently. You should determine the correct partner for each location. If it is a metro city, which partner do you want to use? If it is to other parts of India, which partner would be appropriate. We suggest the brand partner based on our AI-driven courier allocation system,” Hari said. 

Once the right courier partner was chosen, Carry Pro was able to increase its shipments from 1,000 to 3,000 each month, in just one year. This is symbolic of how Fship has grown its D2C partnerships, be it with big or small brands, Hari said. 

A challenging road to 100+ clients

Fship was able to onboard over 100 clients by studying the D2C landscape and identifying specific logistical challenges businesses were facing. One critical challenge that Fship helped unravel was the problem of tracking pages on D2C websites.

Hari said customers today are increasingly demanding, and require notifications for whether their order has been picked up, packed and shipped. While many logistics partners charge for these tracking notifications, Fship made the strategic decision to offer this service for free. 

Additionally, many D2C brands were using external tracking pages that did not open on the brand page, but on the aggregator’s website. Fship, wanting to preserve the brand experience, started offering D2C brands their very own tracking page. As a result, brands were able to deliver a greater experience, bringing about higher sales and lower calls to customer services. 

Another challenge that Fship spotted was a lack of a support system when it came to platform integration. Very often, aggregators cannot help D2C brands with their integration queries. Fship, on the other hand, has made integration simple and offers backup solutions in case they cannot offer a speedy resolution to a client’s problem. 

“This is how we are changing the experience for D2C brands. Our motive is not to build a client-aggregator relationship. We want to partner with brands. Create a family-like experience, where we grow alongside our D2C partners”, he said.

Hari ended the keynote by revealing that D2C has surpassed its own expectations, onboarding 500 D2C brands in 2024. The road doesn’t end here though, as Fship plans to onboard another 1,000 D2C brands in the near future.

Senior bureaucrat Arunish Chawla on Thursday took charge as the Secretary, Department of Revenue.

A 1992-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Bihar cadre, Chawla served as the Secretary in the Department of Pharmaceuticals in the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers since November 1, 2023.

On Wednesday, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet appointed Chawla as the Revenue Secretary.

A doctorate in Economics from the London School of Economics, Chawla served as the Managing Director of the Metro Rail Project Patna; and on Foreign Assignment through Department of Economic Affairs as the Senior Economist, International Monetary Fund.

He has also served as Minister (Economic), for the Embassy of India in Washington DC; and also as Joint Secretary in the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, the finance ministry statement said.

Manmohan Singh, the architect of India’s economic reforms, had to literally face a trial-by-fire to ensure widespread acceptance of his path-breaking 1991 Union budget that saw the nation rise from its darkest financial crises.

Singh, the newly-appointed finance minister in the PV Narasimha Rao-led government, did it with great elan—from facing journalists at a post-budget press conference to irate Congress leaders unable to digest the wide-ranging reforms at the parliamentary party meeting.

Singh’s historic reforms not only rescued India from near bankruptcy but also redefined its trajectory as a rising global power.

Singh made an unscheduled appearance at a press conference on July 25, 1991, a day after the presentation of the Union budget, “to ensure that the message of his budget did not get distorted by less-than-enthusiastic officials”, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh wrote in his book “To the Brink and Back: India’s 1991 Story”, that recounts the fast-paced changes that took place after Rao became prime minister in June 1991.

“The finance minister explained his budget—calling it ‘a budget with a human face’. He painstakingly defended the proposals to increase fertiliser, petrol and LPG prices,” Ramesh recounted in the book published in 2015.

Ramesh was an aide to Rao during his initial months in office.

Sensing the disquiet in the Congress ranks, Rao called a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) on August 1, 1991, and decided to allow party MPs to “vent their spleen freely”.

“The prime minister stayed away and allowed Manmohan Singh to face the flak on his own,” Ramesh wrote, adding that two more meetings took place on August 2 and 3, in which Rao was present throughout.

“In the CPP meetings, the finance minister cut a lonely figure and the prime minister did nothing to alleviate his distress,” Ramesh recounted.

Only two MPs—Mani Shankar Aiyar and Nathuram Mirdha—backed Singh’s budget wholeheartedly.

Aiyar had supported the budget, contending that it conformed to Rajiv Gandhi’s beliefs on what needed to be done to stave off the financial crisis.

Bowing to pressure from the party, Singh had agreed to lower the 40% increase in fertiliser prices to 30% but had left the hike in LPG and petrol prices untouched.

The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs met twice on August 4 and 5, 1991, to decide on the statement Singh would make in the Lok Sabha on August 6.

“The statement dropped the idea of a rollback, which had been demanded over the past few days but now spoke of protecting the interests of small and marginal farmers,” Ramesh said in his book.

“Both sides had won. The party had forced a rethink but the fundamentals of what the government wanted—the decontrol of prices of fertilisers other than urea and an increase in urea prices—had been preserved,” he recounted.

“This was political economy at its constructive best—a textbook example of how the government and the party can collaborate to create a win-win situation for both,” he added in the book.