Currently works with more than 130 leading FMCG and beverage companies
Mumbai: LEAP India ensures better storage and efficient transportation of FMCG goods in the country by letting Pallets on lease to all leading FMCG brands in the country. The company is currently working with more than 130 leading brands in FMCG sector to move their goods. In the current scenario of diminishing customer loyalty, the need for brands to be efficient in ensuring their brand presence on the shelves of shops, super and hyper markets. The timely delivery of goods has become deciding factor on increasing market share of FMCG companies. The customers are fast to pick up another brand goods, if the specific brand is not available on the shelves.
Any delays in transportation of these goods may lose the customers to competition. The increasing competition in the sector has necessitated the senior management of these companies to change the way their goods are stored and the way their goods are transported. Pallets have helped them in a big way in the last one decade of their presence in the country to weed out inefficiencies in storage and transportation of goods fast.
LEAP is one of seven companies in the world present in manufacturing and leasing pallets to FMCG, Automobile, Healthcare, logistic firms and beverage companies. The company has started operations in the year 2013 and has been growing at 200% year on year.
Changing times also demands for change in the way one store and transport goods in India. Worldwide palletisation is very old concept and entire storage and transportation of goods are palletized.
Pallet is made of imported wood, nails and edible paint from Russia, Ukraine and Germany. Once the goods are stored on the pallet, it is very easy for fork lifts to move the goods on to trucks or any other transport, when the goods reaches to the destination it is easy for the shops, super markets and hyper markets to unload the goods from the trucks.
The developed markets have embraced this concept four to five decades back and their entire movements of the goods are done on pallets. The pallet moves from manufacturer to Wholesaler, from there to retailer and finally to customer.
Moreover, the palletizing across the world has reduced carbon footprint and lots of these large corporates and leading brands have been earning carbon credits. The same should be the case in India, as the pallets life is more than 25 years with good maintenance at regular intervals, the need for cutting more trees doesn’t arise. This saves lots of capex for these brands, time to focus on their core and also reduce carbon foot print.
In India, the method of transferring goods is still traditional. Imagine the kind of efforts, cost and time being reduced by palletizing the goods. For example, a truck full of goods requires 14 workers and 3 hours to load and off-load it. And when the items are fresh farm produce or fragile or perishable there is around 81% chance of goods getting damaged while transferring from point A to point B leading to lower visibility on shelf resulting in fall in sales and unhappy customers for clients. On the contrary, palletizing requires simple machinery called fork lifting to move huge amount of goods safely which reduces the time to as minimum as 30 minutes from three hours, reducing labor and additional cost to the company for damages, because once the products are secured with straps and stretched wrapping the goods the safe to move.
The company expects its revenue to touch ₹ 100 crore during the current financial year as compared to ₹37 crore revenues generated in the last financial year FY17. The company had recently raised Rs. 110 crore from couple of private equity players like Mayfield, IndiaNivesh and Sixthsense. They had already raised Rs. 50 crore debt and is expected to close another Rs. 50 crore from Banks and NBFCs. This investment will take company’s pallets to 3 million by 2020, which would generate Rs. 280 crore revenues for the company.
LEAP India’s major clientele includes Mondelez, Nestle, Flipkart, Coco Cola, Amul, DHL, Abbott, Amazon, LG, Heinz, ITC, L’Oreal, Marico etc.
About LEAP India Ltd.:
LEAP India provides 1 million pallets made of wood imported from Russia and the contracts of pallets range from 3-5 years. The pallets are reusable, repairable and are an asset to the company. To keep track on the movement of goods, the company has also built its own software MyLEAP to ensure safe delivery of goods from warehouses to stores.
Mr. Sunu Mathew, has started this company in the year 2013, after 12 years his stint in marketing with L’Oreal and six years with CHEP India.