Infrastructure has always been a crucial facilitator for improving the economic standing of nations across the world. The warehousing industry has been on an increasing development trend due to changing customer behavior. Today’s consumers want quick, easy access to the things they need at their doorsteps. There is a sizable customer base growing in tier II and III cities as a result of greater Internet penetration, the government’s push for Digital India, rising levels of disposable income, a young population that is aware of brands, and a desire for an improved lifestyle.

As a result, companies are restructuring their supply networks and relocating closer to the centres of consumption. The warehouse, industrial, and logistics sectors will be essential to achieving India’s goal of having a $5 trillion economy by FY25. Due to the favorable market dynamics and enormous untapped potential, it is only expected that the industry would grow at a healthy rate and become a major sector of the country’s economy.

Go Green Warehouses Pvt Limited is an Ahmedabad-based company founded in 2018 by Mr. Maulik Shah and Mr. Santosh Kumar Sahu to provide an efficient and low-cost solution to the country’s Agri value chain players to minimize storage losses at one end while managing their backend activities very smoothly at the other. In addition to offering warehousing services to participants in the agri-value chain, such as FPOs, farmers, traders, processors, importers, exporters, retailers, etc., Go Green Warehouses also makes money for them by setting up warehouse-based financing during the procurement phase to maintain their liquidity and create market linkage support to sell at very good prices.

The business has successfully operated in more than 23 states while managing 30 lakh metric tonnes of customer stocks of agricultural products, with a peak value of over Rs. 8,000 crores in June 2022. It has sister companies like Gogreen Care and Gogreen Labs to support audit and quality-assay services for the more than 1200 Gogreen Warehouses across India. The company’s founders state, “We manage more than 100 commodities in 100+ districts in India with more than 1200+ warehouses. In India, it is estimated that at least 200 million farmers go to bed on empty stomachs each night due to post-harvest losses.” We solve this problem through the best warehousing

Embarking the Benchmarks

Go Green Warehouses is the only WSP in the nation focusing solely on helping businesses with their warehousing and commodity management needs. Unlike its former competitors, who made trading and financing their primary sources of income rather than warehousing, Go Green Warehouses has no conflicts of interest.

A highly strong IT system connects each node of the operations and enterprises, effectively digitizing the process. Due to the process’s agility, the business may launch a warehouse operation in response to a client inquiry in less than 12 hours.

The differentiating factor that makes us unique is that Go Green is the only Agri warehouse service provider who is not involved in any kind of trading or financing on its own. It provides personalized services. Small consumer complaints are handled by senior management at a series of desks rather than through a large bureaucratic system, and they are closed within 12 hours. Its excellent ERP and IT infrastructure enable the business to tailor its services to meet the demands of clients. A straightforward hierarchy and real-time customer help are available. Here, the system for audit, inspection, and monitoring is quite effective.

The Journey Since Inception

The story began when Mr. Maulik Shah and Mr. Santosh Sahu met. At that time, Maulik Shah’s warehouses were being used by Santosh Sahu in conjunction with a business. They discovered while working in the sector that warehousing in agriculture is a specialized service. Because it necessitates several trusts and operational oversight, few participants are interested in the benefits, and whoever is present on a small scale is present. When the industry at that time was experiencing low confidence and subpar services, the visionaries decided to keep the foundation of Go Green, a warehousing company, in order to offer individualized services, foster trust and transparency at one end, and facilitate quick decision-making by including owners as a part of management to grow quickly.

Go Green Warehouses aims to be India’s largest warehousing service provider within the next three years. Being a dynamic leader himself, Go Green’s co-founder and CEO, Santosh Sahu, is a highly accomplished professional with over 20+ years of experience in the domains of profit center operations, strategic planning, product positioning, and collateral management. He is also a Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DAIICT) and Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) alumni who reign globally in agri-warehousing.

24/7 Availability for Clients

Santosh Sahu and his colleagues strive to provide a better customer experience from sign-up to the time the staff leaves the warehouse by linking several services at various logistical nodes. The team treats customers as business partners. They are assisted in setting up commodity businesses in various regions of the nation so that they may store and manage their commodities through those businesses.

In order to provide consumers with the finest possible service in the industry, Go Green Warehouses has a highly professional business development and operations staff working across the nation. Its employees are having very high emotional intelligence at every level to handle the customers in the best of the ways possible to get them repeated again and again for years together.

Customers want “instant gratification” and expect to get an answer or resolution to their queries immediately. For that reason, the central desk and state offices are available from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on a daily basis to respond and provide solutions. Also, Go green connects the dots in the entire Agri value chain through its solutions at every stage and use everything at its disposal to deliver the best customer experience.

Mr. Sahu states, “We have got the right team and all necessary digital technologies to support them with the best-in-class customer care technology, to acquire and retain more customers.”

Business Transformation with Modern Advancements

When it comes to the supply chain industry, AI and Machine Learning in logistics may be quite beneficial. By using them, it is possible to streamline the procedure, prevent errors that people could make or overlook, and forecast opportunities and obstacles in the future.

One of the most crucial components of a supply chain management strategy is supply chain planning or SCP. Having dependable tools is essential for creating effective strategies. Businesses may greatly improve the efficiency of their supply chain decision-making processes by implementing machine learning. Mr. Sahu states, “Analyzing huge data sets and applying intelligent algorithms, you and your team will balance demand and supply and, at the same time, optimize the delivery processes.”

The fact that there is less human interference is another positive element, in addition to improved supply decisions. Those massive amounts of data won’t need to be examined independently. Algorithms based on artificial intelligence (AI) will handle everything for businesses and prevent errors. Only the parameters will need to be defined by businesses.

The issue may be resolved, and enterprise warehouse management can be entirely improved thanks to machine learning and its forecasting capabilities. Additionally, artificial intelligence can easily avoid all the mistakes humans can make while analyzing a massive data collection far faster than a person could.

Computer vision (CV) is a field of study that is responsible for developing diverse techniques that help computers see and understand images and videos. And this is exactly that tool that can provide one with warehouse automation and solve a number of tasks. For instance, computer vision systems can automate the barcode reading process and, therefore, accelerate and simplify it.

Businesses can use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to anticipate demand more accurately or predict demand more accurately to increase supply chain efficiency. Businesses will receive a thorough analysis of all the elements that might affect demand based on historical experience.

Businesses may use artificial intelligence to choose the optimal routes, which will lower shipping costs and speed up the shipping process overall. This is crucial if a firm has a sizable online consumer base and does a lot of business. They are always content to receive their orders without any delays as soon as possible. And they require artificial intelligence (AI) in order to optimize the track path and assess the current routing. Therefore, they will be able to achieve better results and bigger profits.

Mr. Sahu shares, “Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning can monitor and predict traffic and other factors that can somehow influence your shipping time.” He further adds, “Peak hours in logistics centers are also an important factor, so we recommend you use the technology to predict and, therefore, avoid them. As a result, you will spend less time in the centres and make your customers happier.”

Challenges that have to be Addressed

As Mr Sahu finds that ESG and Climate change is the biggest challenges in the business. ESG covers three types of issues: Environmental, Social, and Governance. These issues affect both a business’s internal makeup and external effects. Agri warehousing is very tough to manage, and the major challenges are:

• Manpower: Untrained manpower, but we need huge numbers. This is the biggest challenge. Accountable and talented manpower is the key to success which is not available for the industry
• Machine: Automation and complete digitization is not yet done as this business is a very low-margin business and seasonal in nature, making it more manual and manpower oriented
• Capital/Money: This is a very low margin, high transaction business, so daily cash flow is very important. Many companies fail because their bottom line cannot support their expenses.

The Gogreen Supply Chain Sustainability Platform provides deep visibility, offering more transparency throughout the entirety of clients’ supply chains. It allows one to go past their own direct suppliers to where the risks are hiding. Mr. Sahu opines, “Be patient and look for alternatives to avoid the challenging things to grow.”

Expansion to Scale Growth

The Go Green Warehouses team aspires to scale and expand growth through a multichannel approach, a multigeography approach (both domestically and internationally), and more solutions through innovation and R&D. They also envision forward integration of warehousing to ports and customer-level deliveries as well as a backward integration of warehousing to farmgate level.

In order to reach out to more than 2,000 tiny micro-warehouses at the FPO level for last-mile financing and market links to farmers, the team expands the Pledge funding through banks and NBFCs by offering loans to all depositors by acting as BCs to banks. The corporation also invests significantly in the exchange storage and commodity-assessing industries. Additionally, it increases the value-added services it offers to institutions, such as sorting, grading, and private labelling.