The movement of goods by the freight forwarding industry - taking the right product to the right place - has been in sync over time. Every experienced stakeholder has carved out a strategic niche (read, a profitability formula) to survive in the industry.

With a cut and paste process in place, those shy of transparency and seamlessness in the system have fared even better. The mantra being – the more ‘broken’ the process, the better they fare.

In a nutshell, the number of service providers mediating the `inefficiencies’ have kept growing. There is evidence that too many opportunists among them have led to the glaring inadequacies in the value chain. And so, when the world is actually shrinking to bring a customer and a supplier closer, this value chain keeps expanding. There is no mention of removing the “inefficiencies” at all.This dichotomy points to an emerging storyline that seems inevitable – a new alignment of freight centres may soon alter the geopolitics of the entire game.

Suddenly, there appears room for newer players in an industry that has never seen any kind of paradigm shift anywhere – whether in India or anywhere else in the world. Have a longer association with this industry, and you can perceive a potential change in the behavioural pattern of users.

A very very human touch industry seems right on the anvil of change.

Watch this space for more…. Next: ‘User Behaviour. Change, will you?”