"IT Penetration In Travel And Logistics Is Sub Optimal"

IBS Software, a provider of IT solutions to global travel, transport and logistics (TTL) industry, has announced that Jet Airways has gone live with its crew management system – Avient Crew. The company sees huge potential in the TTL industry for IT penetration, though India still stands at a sub optimal level. In a brief tête-à-tête with Biztech2.0, VK Mathews, Chairman and CEO, IBS Group, shares his views on the challenges faced by the TTL industry and how IT can help overcome them.
What kind of opportunity do you see in the travel, transport and logistics (TTL) industry?

Operations in the travel, transport and logistics (TTL) industry are still very physical, in today’s world where decision making happens in minutes. In the TTL industry, just moving of things takes a huge amount of time. Around 90% of the time is spent on cargos waiting to move. That’s where we see an opportunity. Most of the movement jobs which otherwise could have been much quicker get delayed because of lack of information.

More from Biztech

Future Group - Reliance Retail Deal approved by CCI RBI ban on cryptocurrencies takes effect; prohibition could force investors to tap the black market

For us, or any IT vendor looking at the TTL industry, the opportunity is to enable the TTL industry place assets more optimally to move faster with accurate information to achieve faster logistics goals through the use of technology.
How big is the market both globally and in India?

The total worldwide TTL market today stands at $4 trillion. 3% of it is IT, so roughly around $120 billion is our market. In India, the market is still small but there’s a huge opportunity for growth. Today most of the target sectors for TTL want state of the art technology to operate. In fact, $1 out of every $12 in India is spent on transport, so given the size and possibility of automating operations in this sector, the prospect is very huge.

Vendors like us are addressing issues such as allowing client management to enable TTL industry to respond to the changing requirements of customers in real time; coping with the changing market conditions and growth, and retaining and enhancing profitability.

Some of your important target sectors are aviation, travel and cruise and oil and gas transportation. How are these sectors doing with regard to IT adoption?

The Indian civil aviation industry grew at a rate of 38% in the fiscal year 2007-08 and the IT spend constituted a significant chunk of this growth.

The state of IT penetration in travel and cruise is sub optimal. There’s a huge scope for improvement, as tourism in India is still not 100% organised. While 5 star hotels have a web presence, there’s no proper distribution of information about 1/2 star hotels; IBS plans to grab this opportunity.

Inventory management is another area of opportunity for us. Today inventory management of travel production is 100% manual, making it more prone to human errors. IBS plans to address this. We also want to cater our solutions to the capacity management needs of service apartments.

In the oil and gas sector, there’s no optimisation of logistics resources – helicopter, ship, men and machine. IBS plans to address this by providing resource optimisation solutions, automated scheduling and managing of ships and neutralising the logictics needs.