Kale Consultants foray into logistics

Travel and transportation software services firm Kale Consultants has rejigged its products and services portfolio as part of its plan to enter the logistics business. The company would also offer customised solutions to hospitality sector.

Rajiv Dalal, senior vice president and head, global sales said, "We would use our experience in airline and transportation industry to enter related verticals like logistics and hospitality, and would launch customised solutions for improving the company's bottomline."

The company has already started developing a web-enabled solution for its first logistics client, Direct Logistics, a multinational freight-forwarding & logistics group. The solution will help automate logistics-related to ocean, air and multi-modal freight operations.

It would cover areas including sales, export, import and tracking, and will also provide on-demand as well as routine management information.

The foray into logistics is a natural progression from cargo management for airlines. "We expect logistics to contribute 10-20 per cent of our revenues in 2007-08," said Dalal.

He added: "The deal size for such solutions could vary from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 2 crore."

He said he expects to clinch another two deals soon, one with a domestic auto components manufacturer, which had ventured into logistics towards the end of the last year and another with a global shipping company.

"There is a huge potential to be tapped and we expect to sign at least two big deals in next three months," Dalal said.

In its travel services portfolio, the company offers integrated search engines which can be used for hotel booking and reservation of air tickets.

"We are presently researching the needs of the hospitality sector and within the coming quarter will launch our pilot product offering," Dalal said.

Also in the next three months, the company will launch a new solution for improving the productivity of sales agents for airline tickets.

"We will introduce a new service which would offer the sales agents customised rates for fare filing depending on their past performance,'' he said.