Prashanth Vijayakumar: Creating A Positive Customer Experience Through Reliable & Cost-Efficient Logistic Services | CEOInsights Vendor
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Prashanth Vijayakumar: Creating A Positive Customer Experience Through Reliable & Cost-Efficient Logistic Services

Prashanth Vijayakumar: Creating A Positive Customer Experience Through Reliable & Cost-Efficient Logistic Services

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Prashanth Vijayakumar,Founder & CEO

Prashanth Vijayakumar

Founder & CEO

The pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, which lasted for most of the previous year has turned to be a challenging period for many sectors, including India's logistics and supply chain industry, which significantly contributed in keeping the supply chain for vital products running, although with some setbacks at first. Bylane Logistic is one such company that has consistently offered logistics services under such circumstances. In an exclusive interview with CEO Insights, Prashanth Vijayakumar(Founder and CEO) of Bylane Logistics enlightened us on key aspects of the company and his entrepreneurial journey so far.

What were the challenges that you encountered in the early days of your entrepreneurial journey and how did you overcome those to evolve as a business leader?
Since this is a blue collar task, filling the workforce demand was a major challenge when Bylane Logistics was launched. In our early days, there were no definitive recruitment portals available to hire blue-collar workers, and the hiring industry was still an unorganized market at the time. Consequently, overcoming the difficulty of training the recruited staff had proved to be a challenging task. Apart from that, it was extremely difficult to obtain realtime information due to the lack of technological advances in the logistics industry but, as internet connectivity improved and became more widely available, we were able to obtain real-time information. Also, offices operating in remote areas can now log into our systems providing improved situational awareness.

Enlighten us about the various services that you offer under the transportation & logistics portfolio. Also, explain the unique benefits that customers can avail from these services.
Bylane Logistic is a unified B2B and B2C logistics platform for E-commerce, Food Joints, FMCG Brands, Pharma firms, and online/offline retailers, driven by innovation, with an end-to-end logistics network. With each
enterprise experiencing its own set of problems, we at Bylane have found solutions by combining on-the ground intelligence with operational expertise adding a layer of technology. We started Bylane Logistics with last mile logistics services and quickly expanded to include middle-mile and first-mile services. We now have a presence across Tamil Nadu and service over a million packages every month, with plans to increase the scale by 8 to 10x by 2022.

Personal achievements for me include running a business as a ceo and professionally, being able to make an impact on the people you work with and inspiring your team


As a Logistics service provider, one unique advantage that Bylane Logistics has is that we have fine tuned certain protocols and processes that will help reduce cost and improve the quality of your service at the same time. Every aspect of delivery like delivery percentage, address misroutes, ETA SLA’s, Customer experience and support is taken care of by us. Besides, we have invested in technologies that can improve field manpower productivity by about 40 percent.

Give a brief account of the methods/ strategies of yours that have transformed Bylane Logistics entire work culture and client relationships.
The transition aimed to empower people, and when it comes to strengthening the team, we do not recruit the most experienced in the field right away as we noticed the process of unlearning and relearning the digitized logistic grid took a major part of our time and effort; instead, we concentrate on recruiting enthusiastic trustworthy people, which is our internal strategy, and we teach them the necessary skills later. Another approach we take it to ensure that the management only formulates plans, but the managers and supervisors on the ground have full control over the implementation. These two methodologies have proven extremely beneficial in handling the company's internal operations.

On the external side, we always preempt details before the clients learn about it; for example, if any of the agreed upon SLA’s is not met, we make sure that we are the first to contact the client and apprise them
of the miss even before they are aware of it. Later, we create protocols for the specific situation and ensure that it does not occur again.

What is the future impact of technologies on reverse logistics, especially Post-COVID recovery time and what will affect your supply chain in the future?
The Covid pandemic has boosted demand for logistics services. In the unfortunate event of businesses closing due to high offline rentals and loss of walk-ins, our logistic services could help them quickly jump on to the online bandwagon and serve their customers. In the post-Covid period, delivery of food, FMCG items, groceries, and even basic e-commerce products has seen a huge increase in supply. The amount of demand that has been generated in the market has accelerated this industry by at least two years. What we had expected to happen in the logistics industry in 2023-24 is happening now, and we are simply moving ahead to fill the demand supply gap.

In your journey over the past, which are the milestones that bestowed you with utmost satisfaction both as an individual and a Founder and CEO?
The biggest personal achievement has been to see my team rise to the occasion with me. The managers and supervisors who work at Bylane Logistics today are likely to have started as floor superintendents, distribution staff, or drivers. Because of their financial difficulties, most of these individuals have discontinued their education or have never attended any school or college. Seeing them develop their skills and advance in their careers has given me great personal gratification. The key achievement has been the opportunity to work with such individuals and create an environment and have their opportunities prosper.

Prashanth Vijayakumar, Founder & CEO
Prashanth has been involved in various decision-making and management positions at small and mid-size startups. He has been instrumental in the development of new concepts and the streamlining of existing ones from conception to implementation. Prashanth, a firm believer in technology, has always sought to incorporate cutting-edge technical processes that merge the offline and online worlds for a better user experience. Prashanth has over 10 years of business experience in project management, BCP implementation, organizational development, operational control and customer service.

Location: Chennai

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