Interview

At your door: XPS

From conventional cargos to door-to-door service, XPS has done it all. K Prabhakar, President and CEO, XPS talks to Sushmi Dey about its services to pharmacos.

How will the express delivery system aid pharma industry?

The express delivery service industry in India has shown promising growth over the last few years. The total express industry market size in India is Rs 7,100 crore and a healthy annual growth rate of 20 percent is projected for the next five years. Initially we started with providing services to sectors like telecom, electronics and warehouse services. We started our pharma segment in 1999.

What are the needs that are unique to the pharmaceutical industry?

The pharmaceutical industry is a time and cost sensitive industry. It needs a system wherein they can save time and reduce cost. So we decided to forge our services to pharmaceutical industry. Initially we started with product specific segment for pharma.

The pharmaceutical industry is a highly organised sector in India. The sector is also growing at about eight to nine percent annually. To invest in pharmaceutical industry is therefore a good opportunity. Our growth is dependent on the industry's growth. 20 percent of our total business comes from the pharma industry. And we have recently invested around Rs five crore on our pharma segment.

What are the services provided to the pharma sector?

XPS provides varied services to pharma companies like express delivery of bulk cargo, small parcels, dedicated vehicles for high-value items including life saving drugs, vaccines, and sample distribution to medical representatives. We provide services to all the major pharmaceutical companies like Wockhardt, Lupin, Cipla and Ranbaxy.

How do you ensure time and quality in your services?

We are into a business where customer satisfaction is very important and hence it is our foremost priority. Every customer has a different requirement. We try our best to meet the expectations of our customers.

Quality is another focus area in our business. We always work to strengthen our quality. Last but not the least, our efforts are guided towards retaining those who are already our customers and add up those who are not there. To ensure quality and safe delivery of products, we use closed body vehicles or containers. There are no open trucks in use in our delivery system. To ensure that the products are not tampered at all, we use one time locking facility wherein, we use a seal to lock the container. This seal once broken cannot be reused and hence avoids any kind of tampering.

What are your plans for future?

We want to implement better and new technologies. We want to do away with the hard copy of POD (Proof of Delivery) and will provide signature instantly with the use of latest technology. We are also planning to implement client software wherein clients can access our data for their business.

sushmi.dey@expressindia.com