ClickPost, India-based logistics intelligence company, is planning a major expansion to extend its operations across the GCC market by year end, amid e-commerce companies’ increased focus to significantly reduce their returned deliveries and save billions of dollars annually.
The Indian start-up is also in talks with some of the leading companies in the luxury, apparel, cosmetics and pharma sectors in the GCC region for partnership deals as part of its ambitious growth plans in the region.
“Our operations currently cover three markets and we are targeting to extend our presence to the entire GCC market before the end of this year itself,” Pranshu Kacholia, vice president of business development of ClickPost told Arabian Business.
ClickPost currently has a presence in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
“[The] e-commerce industry in the Middle East is expected to cross $50 billion by 2025 and we are highly bullish on this region for our global growth plans,” Kacholia said.
As for its on-going discussions with companies in the GCC region, the ClickPost senior executive said: “We cater to all verticals in the e-commerce sector except food and grocery and are currently in talks with several companies in these verticals for partnering with them to improve their logistic operations and costs, and customer experience.”
Kacholia, however, declined to disclose the names of the companies because of confidentiality issues.
ClickPost is also in discussions with some of the leading Indian luxury products companies operating across the Middle East and has just entered into a partnership deal with Candere, an arm of the Indian jewellery retail chain Kalyan Jewellers.
“There is a big shift happening towards e-commerce, especially for luxury, apparel, medicine and furnishing products in the Middle East and other regions post-pandemic, and we are better placed to accelerate this trend with some of our exclusive logistic solutions and products,” Kacholia said.
.jpg?wqg8ae7n)
ClickPost’s products automatically identify all GCC-specific supply chain exceptions and resolve them
Kacholia said the company does not operate in the online food and grocery sectors – two major and fast growing segments of e-commerce – as they have their own persons for last mile delivery.
The ClickPost senior executive said returned deliveries – or return-to-origin (RTO) in the e-commerce parlance – is the major problem e-commerce companies in the Middle East region face, resulting in billions of dollars of losses annually.
According to Kacholia, lack of zip-codes and non-standardized names for cities are the major reasons for failed deliveries in the GCC region. For instance, the same city is called by different names – Al Bahah, Al-Bahah, Al Baha – by different courier companies.
“ClickPost has built a universal city name mapper for GCC featuring different names of cities that are used across different couriers, which has significantly reduced the manual effort for logistics teams of e-commerce companies to sort address mismatches,” he said.
Another issue is the added costs being incurred by e-commerce ventures on account of higher order cancellations and RTOs by first time online buyers.
“Our artificial intelligence (AI) products automatically identify all GCC-specific supply chain exceptions and resolve them.
“For instance, if there is a ‘failed delivery attempt’ made by any courier company because the delivery boy could not find the address of the recipient, ClickPost systems automatically identify this and send a message to the recipient asking for a revised address and updates this information on the courier partner systems, thereby ensuring that the next delivery attempt is successful,” Kacholia said.
Follow us on
