CELCIUS: One stop station for shippers, cold-chain transportation and warehousing service providers.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, India observed an escalated demand for cold-chain logistics infrastructure. As per the current report by Research and Markets, in 2020 the Indian cold-chain market stood at Rs 1425.49 billion. In simple words, temperature-controlled storage and logistics and supply chain service is included in cold-chain infrastructure.
Founded in November 2020, the Navi Mumbai-based cold-chain marketplace startup Celsius, is operating to reinforce the cold-chain infrastructure in India. The startup Celsius is the brainchild of Swarup Bose, Rajneesh Raman and Arbind Jain. It offers an aggregator stage that interfaces customers with cold-chain transportation and warehousing service suppliers.
Celsius connects shippers and transporters pan India. The startup's network grows with each passing day. It carries and stores any perishable cargo. It understands how to love for the consignment. The company has expanded to 40+ cities while operating with 200+ partners and developing 60+ cold storages.
“We have taken CELSIUS vehicles for Chennai and Hyderabad and I really appreciate the prompt placement of vehicles as well as driver behaviour also.” Vishnu Deo Mishra, a client of CELSIUS reviewed.
The startup is currently operating in vaccination distribution across India. Aside from this, its focused sectors incorporate dairy, pharma, new food, and fish.
"Prior, there was no online presence where individuals in the cold-chain area could link with one another. That is the point at which we chose to accomplish something on the web and build a marketplace. Celcius is essentially a marketplace where we associate transporters, carriers, and cold-chain storage organizations," Swarup briefed.
"The transporters, particularly small-sized transporters from Tier II and Tier III urban cities are clustered in Celcius. Furthermore it assists them with refreshing their reefer vehicles. The startup is fostering a linked network of transporters and shippers all over the country." Swarup said.
The startup updated the vehicles of the transporters and shippers. They have introduced IoT gadgets and thermal sensors which helps in tracking the live temperature of the load.
The startup professes to have moved more than 2,800 tons of perishable freight like frozen food and meat among others, covering 85+ urban areas all over India to date.
"For vaccines, we have been generally working in the last mile delivery where we disseminate it to various hospitals and vaccination centers," Swarup said
It also shared that Celcius operates with Reliance to distribute vaccines to the vaccination centre of Reliance Hospitals.
"For picking up the vaccines from Serum Institute of India we offer vehicles to Reliance to ship it to their Chunabhatti stockroom. We also flourish the last mile delivery facilities to convey the COVID-19 vaccines from the storage house to the hospitals and vaccination center." He added.
Swarup briefed about his existing business model, where transporters and customers' companies are required to irst submit their queries about their products. Rest of the responsibility is of Celcius, it will link them with the best suited vehicle and storage suppliers for the product.
They have launched three different apps for the transporter, carrier, and the driver in order to permit the track and the shipment and the temperature.
The startup has almost 2000 reefer vehicles and 75 warehouses. The onboarding process begins when the shipper or storehouse facilitator gets in touch with Celsius. Then Celsius itself goes to the site and examines the quality of infrastructure, temperature, vehicles and its guidelines.
Celcius raised a confidential amount in seed funding led by Mumbai-based Eaglewings Ventures Alliance Network (EVAN), Venture Capital & Private Equity firms MaGEHold, Keiretsu Forum, and other investors in last month.
Presently, Celcius is working with many clients like IB Group, Innovative Foods, and Godrej Agrovet.
"We don't charge a single penny from the transporter or carrier while onboarding them. We acquire a little rate as administration charge from the delivery which is reserved and completed. As of now, our software services are free for both the transporters and shippers," Swarup said.
As per the report by Expert Market Research, the Indian cold-chain market is expected to rise at a CAGR of 14.3 percent to touch Rs 2,865 billion by 2026.
Future Plans
Swarup said a part of the raised amount in seed funding will be used to increase teams all over India in 30 to 40 cities. If the small-sized cold-chain companies will face a shortage of funds during operations, our company is ready to provide them funds.
Since the demand for cold-chain is escalating pan India, it proved to be the best time for the company's support to the ecosystem via its network.
