Celcius Logistics, India's fastest growing cold-chain marketplace startup, today announced the launch of its smart last mile delivery platform that addresses and fixes the most pertinent pain points in India's fragile cold supply chains. The brand has also partnered with vehicle owners and automotive manufacturers to create a robust on ground network of reefer vehicles, that will be integrated with the smart platform which has been created with a unique Inventory Management System (IMS). Celcius has launched this platform in six metros and plans on expanding this to other tier-2 cites and towns in the next six months. The company has already secured contracts for storage and distribution from clients like Zepto, Maersk, Jubilant foodworks and others, and also handles distribution for Zomato, Rebel foods and a host of other Cloud kitchens and local businesses who get instant access to all the asset inventory via Celcius's last mile delivery platform.
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Mr. Swarup Bose, Founder and CEO, Celcius Logistics
India currently incurs food losses worth about $14bn, due to inefficiencies in the cold supply chain, especially last mile deliveries. Some of the most common challenges in the temperature controlled last mile deliveries, include lapses in maintaining optimum temperatures, using non refrigerated vehicles for transit (since these generally include shorter distances), absolute lack of tracking and tracing technology to monitor this part of the distribution, huge lack of smaller reefer vehicles which in turn force dealers and retailers to use non reefer vehicles, handling of products with untrained drivers and delivery agents and many other issues make the final leg of a supply chain the worst in terms of managing the perishable products. Shippers also incur heavy revenue losses due to systemic gaps in the cold chain. Since each vehicle carries materials for multiple stores and ends up sorting and unloading at multiple stops, the temperature consistency is lost each time the doors are kept open while inventory is being sorted out. As a result, by the time the vehicle delivers to the last store, the product quality is compromised, causing rejections and returns and thus revenue losses.
Through this platform, Celcius aims to connect various cold chain stakeholders and deploy tech-first solutions to reduce the massive in-transit wastage of perishables caused by cold chain malpractices and inefficiencies. Speaking about the new platform and the efforts to strengthening the last mile delivery of cold supply chain, Mr. Swarup Bose, Founder and CEO, Celcius, said, "I am happy to announce the launch of our last mile solution for the cold supply chain which has been a labor of love for past 8 months. With the success of our SaaS platform that focuses on the initial leg of the supply chain, we are now focused on strengthening the last leg of the journey with aggregation of existing small reefer vehicles and introducing a new range of reefer vehicles on Mahindra bolero, Tata 407, Ashokleyland Dost, among others. Through this solution, we envision a nationwide network of these last mile vehicles and storage points, making the Primary and secondary movement and storage of perishables more efficient. As a platform, we aim to become the backbone upon which any entity involved in manufacturing and distribution of perishable products can do so with absolute visibility of their product from end to end. We hope this endeavor can work towards reducing wastage, reducing prices and enhancing the food security for the country."
Celcius's last-mile platform is designed to monitor and analyze gaps in distribution and deploys a predictive algorithm to eliminate potential risk areas, reduce bottlenecks, speed up ETAs, and provide shippers with absolute visibility of their product from start to end. Additionally, their optimized IoT devices which facilitate real time tracking, are integrated with their in-house TMS and WMS systems and their SaaS platform, making it a seamless tech enabled ecosystem, such that every product that is booked, and distributed is traced in real time, right up to the last single unit of Milk, Chocolate, medicine and other temperature-controlled products. The tech enablement not only optimizes the last mile but also helps address issues of timely delivery and loss due to wastage, maximizing profitability for all parties and enhancing food security in the country. Celcius has launched its last mile services in Mumbai, Pune, Banglore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Delhi NCR with plans to launch the same services to 11 more cities in the next 6 months.
Formed during the turbulent times of the global pandemic, Celcius has been on an aggressive growth path since inception, and in just two years, has recorded an ARR of INR 50 CR and recently closed USD 7.5 MN in funding rounds. The company has also on-boarded over 3500 vehicles, 100+ Cold storages and grown 20 X in the last 12 months. Tie ups with finance institutions OEMs like Shriram Transport finance, Mahindra & Mahindra , Ashok Leyland and Tata will further accelerate the expansion and adoption of their last mile delivery platform. In a country where 17% of the population goes to bed hungry, Celcius' pioneering last mile delivery platform, reefer vehicle aggregation, and introduction of a fleet of new reefer vehicles under Vahan Vikas Yojana could well be the game changer.
About Celcius Logistics
Celcius is a cold-chain marketplace startup. It is the only aggregator platform in India, which offers solutions for both Reefer logistics and cold storage warehousing. Celcius' simple yet unique solution can be credited to its inception as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic in India. The unprecedented nationwide lockdown in March 2020 exposed the shortcomings of the existing cold chain in India. The unavailability of staff and coordination gaps between the shippers and transporters created chaos in transporting essential commodities across the country. Considering the sustained demand for contactless deliveries of essentials and anticipating the need for a robust and seamless cold chain to aid the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, the founders of Celcius came together to create India's first digital marketplace for the cold chain.
In August last year, Celcius received USD 500,000 in a seed fund round from Mumbai Angels Network, along with Huddle, Lumis Partners, Venture Capital & Private Equity firms MaGEHold, Keiretsu Forum, Eaglewings Ventures Alliance Network (EVAN), and investors from Malaysia, Nigeria, and the US. The brand successfully utilized the funds to scale up its operations and diversify the services on its platform by integrating WMS (Warehouse Management System) and TMS (Transportation Management System).
Celcius recently closed USD 4.5 Mn in a bridge funding round. The company on-boarded over 2500 vehicles, 107 Cold storages and has grown 20 X in the period of 1 year. The company plans to raise a Series A round of USD 10 Mn in the coming months. The brand has also tied up with finance institutions like Shriram Transport and Finance Company and with OEMs like Ashok Leyland and Tata.
