As of May 2024, the venture has transformed itself into a major name in the logistics sector by designing, manufacturing and operating the world’s largest instant logistics and delivery system that has emerged as the first choice among businesses, governments and consumers, especially in Africa.

Zipline operates on three continents, North America, Africa and Asia, along with seven countries, Rwanda, Ghana, the United States, Nigeria, Japan, Kenya and Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast).

Knowing Things In Detail

Zipline has made over 540,000 deliveries to customers, with an astounding rate of one every 90 seconds. The start-up has flown 60 million autonomous commercial miles, apart from delivering almost five million products, including more than eight million vaccine doses.

Zipline, which originally started its operations in the form of delivering blood and medical products in Rwanda, has since expanded its presence to sectors like food, retail, agriculture, and animal health. Zipline has two platforms, one for long-range delivery and the other for precise home delivery.

Opting for Zipline’s services helps its customers save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide new logistics services at scale.

Talking about Zipline’s in-house technology and products, let’s meet Zips, drones that make product deliveries. The product has been tailored for conducting precise deliveries irrespective of the weather conditions.

Zips are of two types: Platform One and Platform Two. Platform One’s operating principle revolves around the venture’s specially designed parachute delivery mechanism, which ensures seamless delivery for consignments carrying delicate and perishable goods. The drones operate on a smart launch and recovery system that also prioritises efficiency and area coverage.

Talking about Platform Two, its operational mechanism involves a low-profile dock, where the drone lands, charges and lowers the delivery droid into the loading portal. The drone uses onboard perception to leave packages exactly where they are supposed to be delivered. They also use multiple sensing technologies, with the ability to monitor 360* airspace. These sensors reach over a mile away, be it day/night, irrespective of the weather conditions, thereby adapting to the delivery routes easily.

Another component of the engineering is “Fleet Deconfliction,” which, aided by the start-up’s fleet management software, autonomously coordinates the traffic of the Zip drones, thereby limiting congestion along the route. The same component also helps the drones to directly communicate with each other.

Zipline also created software, where its business partners access and manage their Zipline services from one dashboard. The start-up’s single and easy-to-use app also makes it easy for people to order whatever they need, and track those orders in real-time. The venture has developed its custom fulfilment apps, which are helping its business partners stay on top of every part of their operation, from shipping to inventory to customer care.

Changing The Logistics Game

Zipline’s drone fleet ensures that customers can track and receive their deliveries in just minutes, from store to door. The drones, travelling at the maximum speed of 70 mph, pick up deliveries within minutes, start their journey, identify a precise and safe delivery spot and conduct their landings. The entire procedure also ensures low operational costs (no surge-spike fees) and higher delivery numbers for the businesses.

While Zipline has partners like “Walmart” and “Michigun Medicine” opting for the start-up’s “Instant Delivery” services, the venture’s “Smart Fulfilment” has clients like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pfizer and Gavi.

Talking about “Smart Fulfilment,” it’s basically an end-to-end, storage, packing and drone delivery service offered by the venture. Under it, Zipline has so far delivered over five million products, with its smart warehousing methods having the ability to store goods at variable temperatures.

Zipline stores products according to food, medical, and other safety standards, after orders are received at Zipline’s facility online or with a messaging app. While the venture’s specially trained staff pick out the items and pack them for delivery, the fulfilment experts do a final standard quality and safety check. Zipline’s storage technology is also compliant with regulations which govern food safety and medical-grade cold chain activities.

What are the advantages Zipline’s business partners are getting by availing the start-up’s storage and fulfilment services? Resource efficiency, decreased wastage and overstocking, increased product availability and cost savings. Also, the business partners can ensure expanded coverage for their product deliveries, exploring new clients and growth regions in the process. Zipline also uses digitised planning and forecasting methods, powered by data insights and these help further to keep the overall delivery and fulfilment costs low and competitive.

Changing The Industry Playbooks

As of May 2024, Zipline is delivering products related to a massive gamut of industries, be it public healthcare, hospitality, agriculture or e-commerce. And how is it helping those industries?

Let’s take the healthcare sector for example. Zipline is making healthcare more effective, accessible, and efficient for everyone, from providers and payers to patients and caregivers, through its fast product deliveries. Availing the start-up’s solutions helps a medical facility build a comprehensive healthcare system that can deliver prescriptions within minutes of a telehealth appointment. The medical staff can send chemotherapy cocktails straight to patient homes. They can also transport labs instantly for faster diagnoses and better care.

Apart from ensuring cheaper product deliveries (cheaper than ground logistics), avoiding product loss/spoilage with end-to-end cold chain and ensuring safe delivery with advanced chain-of-custody tools, the hospital can also expand access and build new care capabilities with Zipline’s instant drone delivery.

Zipline connects directly to the medical facility’s operations to make them faster and more efficient. The start-up’s simple API integrations sync with the hospital’s software to make tracking and managing orders easy.

A very good case study here has been Michigan Medicine, a leading academic medical centre, which needed a reliable, scalable way to quickly deliver prescriptions directly to patients and transport lab samples between facilities. Zipline stepped in with its instant logistics technology, which helped the facility to game up its distribution and delivery network. Michigan Medicine has doubled its prescriptions, providing better care for hundreds of thousands of patients in their area.

The Rwanda Success

Talking about Zipline’s game-changing contributions to public healthcare, a mention must be made of the differences made by them in the African country of Rwanda.

With Zipline’s smart fulfilment, deliveries are taking minutes, ensuring healthcare products are not being wasted sitting on a shelf, and people access reliable healthcare. Overall performance and transparency have been driven upwards across the whole ecosystem, from middle-mile logistics to last-mile delivery. Reliable nationwide logistics networks are there with cold-chain capabilities.

In Rwanda, the incidents of wastage of blood products have been reduced by 67%. Maternal deaths due to postpartum haemorrhage in Rwandan hospitals, served by Zipline, have shown a 51% reduction. There is a 42% less likely chance of patients missing vaccination opportunities, all thanks to Zipline.

Zipline’s fulfilment and delivery system ensures safe and efficient transport, less waste, and maximum product effectiveness, even for points of care without on-site refrigeration. The cold-chain warehouses are keeping orders at -20ºC for 12 hours or 2-6ºC for 48 hours, apart from eliminating complexity with simpler packaging requirements.

The venture is also helping Rwandan health workers and supply managers to track, manage, and order inventory easily, apart from accessing smart data to analyse and improve operations over time.

Rwanda was battling product shortages, excess wastage, and supply chain inefficiencies serving its health facilities. Reliance on regional warehouses and bulk ground delivery over difficult terrain meant that commodities could often be out of stock or several hours away.

Zipline turned things into instant and on-demand deliveries to health facilities and points of care across the country, starting with the blood products supply chain. From platelets and plasma to cancer medications, vaccines, and anti-venom, commodities are now centralised at Zipline’s warehouses and distributed as needed in under an hour.

The post Start-up of the Week: The ‘Zipline’ way of serving humanity through drone-powered logistics appeared first on International Finance.

“The transaction is expected to close by the end of the second quarter, pending Enservco stockholder approval and the company’s ability to secure the necessary capital through equity or debt financing,” reported Investing.com on the matter.

Buckshot Trucking, founded in 2017, has established its specialisation in hot shot trucking, dedicated freight, and less-than-truckload services within the energy sector. The company reported unaudited 2023 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) of approximately USD 2.3 million on revenues of USD 8.2 million.

“By providing fair pricing, honesty, and dependable services in a highly competitive market, our company has experienced consistent and aggressive growth with increases in our customer base and revenues month after month, quarter after quarter,” Buckshot explained its operations in the following words on their website, while adding, “To date, our company has grown to offer multiple service lines in multiple sectors. Our simple approach to quality service, safety, and dependability has earned Buckshot Trucking LLC the opportunity to provide services across the United States to a diverse group of over 100 customers.”

Buckshot, as of March 2024, is providing trucking solutions like Flatbed (an open trailer where equipment can be loaded from all sides), Step Deck (tailored to haul a higher load without having to buy permits for the load), Dry Van (enclosed trucking method to shield sensitive shipments from weather hazards like high winds, rain, or direct heat), Refrigerated Trucking, Hot Shot Trucking (specialised in delivering time-sensitive loads, to save a company from situations like downtime or production shut down) and Trailer Mounted Forklift.

Enservco’s Chairman and CEO, Richard A. Murphy, while expressing enthusiasm for the acquisition, highlighted the strategic transformation it represents for the company by entering the logistics business. Murphy further noted that Buckshot’s addition will provide year-round growth opportunities and operational and financial visibility, while enhancing services for Enservco’s customer base and improving financial predictability.

As per the reports, Buckshot’s founders, Tony Sims and Jim Fate, will continue to lead the business post-Enservco acquisition, aiming to leverage the latter’s operational footprint for expansion.

The acquisition comes in the background of Enservco reporting improved operational performance in 2023. Murphy anticipated that integrating Buckshot would massively improve Enservco’s financial results for 2024 and support further the company’s growth in subsequent years.

“This strategic acquisition is intended to create a new operating division for Enservco, complementing its existing market position in hot oiling, acidizing, and frac water heating services,” the venture stated further.

The post Enservco’s acquisition of Buckshot Trucking: All you need to know appeared first on International Finance.

In today’s episode of the ‘Start-up of the Week‘, International Finance will talk about a venture which in October 2023, raised USD 10 million in funding, that will be utilized for scaling up Neo Mobility’s fleet of 5,000 electric vehicles by 2025.

In the coming days, Neo Mobility will be launching operations with its new fleet of GSO-certified electric motorbikes, with a driving range of 175 km. The plan has been approved by the UAE’s Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology (MOIAT) and Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) and will enable food aggregators, e-commerce platforms, and logistics companies to achieve their net zero goals.

Among its other plans, the start-up will also be implementing its smart charging infrastructure with battery swapping stations across the Emirate, enabling the Neo riders to swap batteries within 60 seconds.

Knowing The Venture In Detail

Neo Mobility’s expertise lies in providing the best mobility management solutions in arenas like car sharing, rental, leasing, dealership and private fleet management.

Neo helps its clients to solve their fleet management-related problems, in terms of saving time and money, through structured documentation and organized resources, while raising the efficiency and optimization of the fleet management processes. The venture also helps its users improve their customer experience and fidelity by providing more control over their vehicles.

Neo works through two solutions, its ‘Platform’ and the ‘App’. While the ‘Platform’ allows the client to manage his/her fleet in a very flexible and automated manner, the ‘App’ on the other hand, helps the customer to open and close their vehicles, manage his/her bookings, report damage and deciding upon whether the person wants to up/downgrade the car depending on what’s available in the Neo’s fleet.

Both the ‘Platform’ and the ‘App’ provide various integrated options, which cover all the needs of fleet management by providing effective solutions to specific problems.

The ‘App’, available in iOS & Android, apart from being user-friendly and fast responsive, also supports all types of vehicles, various pricing and payment models, multiple languages, professional/private modes (suited for corporate sharing) and many other features.

Neo’s fleet management tool also allows the users to effortlessly manage their own fleets and the start-up also helps in the process by customizing the solution as per the customers’ convenience. The platform is already integrated with different telematics systems and can be linked to any other IoT (Internet of Things) solutions, as per the client’s needs.

“Our platform supports role management in order to let you configure what information will be seen and by whom in your company. It’s also ready to integrate with any third-party services that you need like your ERP, CRM, accounting system, push notifications and analytics,” Neo stated further.

Headquartered in Europe, Neo possesses a team of professionals, who are well experienced in the mobility and car-sharing businesses. Neo is also the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region’s first B2B start-up to offer last-mile solutions through a captive EV infrastructure business model, thereby aligning with the UAE Net Zero and COP28 agenda to build a greener future.

“With over 90,000 motorbikes on UAE roads, it results in 480,600 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, equivalent to over 53 billion smartphones charged or over 49 million gallons of gasoline consumed,” commented a Wamda article on the venture.

How The Solutions Work

“From setup to upscale, our Sharing Platform is built to suit all your business’ specific needs,” Neo stated, whose solution allows the sharing company to handle all the setup of their business. From managing the vehicles, handling the pricing setup, and taking care of the booking types and customer groups to vehicle tracking, Neo’s ‘Sharing’ solution makes the client the controlling authority, when it comes to handling the ride-sharing business.

The ‘Sharing’ solution also comes with an ‘App’, which lets the client’s customers create their bookings, locate their vehicle and perform the check-in functions.

Neo’s multimodal sharing platform fits the needs of companies offering ride-sharing in both two and four-wheeler categories. The client venture can also set up their ride-sharing operating model (ranging from free-floating, station-based to corporate and peer-to-peer ones) and tailor the digital platform with things like a management dashboard, operational team apps, API and third-party integration set-ups.

Neo’s ‘Fleet Management Web Portal’ also helps ride-sharing ventures to seamlessly deal with their fleets, customers, vehicle bookings, pricing models, data and reports, payment systems, invoices, fines and a lot of other functions.

The portal also allows the client ride-sharing venture to integrate its online platform with third-party services like ERP, CRM, Accounting system, push notifications and analytics.

Neo’s ‘Rental’ solution enables its clients to ‘deploy the power of digital’ in their operations. The platform allows the beneficiary to exploit the power and precision of the sharing planning for the venture’s rental activities. Once the business’ vehicles are configured and connected, it can create or edit the booking ‘manually’ on the platform for the customer or let the customer create/edit the booking all by himself/herself.

“In just a few clicks, you have a clear and detailed view of your fleet. A modern and fully customizable tool that allows you to automate your fleet management operations, apart from having better control of your vehicle fleet and significantly reducing your fleet management costs,” Neo stated.

Neo’s digital solutions also cover the vehicle dealership and leasing markets.

Neo In News

Talking about Neo’s ‘Smart Charging Infrastructure’, the last-mile EV start-up’s battery swapping stations will be strategically located across UAE’s commercial hubs and districts. Along with that, the venture will be providing its customers with smart dashboard reports highlighting their CO2 emissions savings.

Making worker welfare its top focus, Neo will equip its riders with safety gear, smart helmets and telematics, apart from eliminating mobile phone usage, and enabling crash detection warnings. The venture will also be providing critical illness and injury insurance coverage along with life insurance, 24/7 rider and driver support and fixed working hours.

The start-up will also be tapping into the ride-hailing sector with its fleet of Tesla cars, with its state-of-the-art EV fast charging infrastructure ensuring drivers recharge their vehicles in less than 30 minutes.

Innovating its leasing solution further, Neo Mobility plans to enable its drivers to pursue a lease-to-own model, empowering these individuals to become entrepreneurs. Neo will also be looking to lease its fleet to third-party logistics (3PL) companies, enhancing the adoption of sustainable transportation in the UAE and wider region.

The post Start-up of the Week: The ‘Neo’ way of ensuring last-mile mobility management appeared first on International Finance.

These solutions come with features like delivery tracking, supply chain visibility, routing, management of dispatch, driver management, inventory management, store operations, returns, first and last-mile deliveries. Global beverage and shopping giants like Coca-Cola, Boulanger and Walmart are some of the prominent customers of Bringg.

Knowing Bringg In Detail

Bringg, which has Salesforce and Shopify as its business partners, helps its clients to optimise and grow their last-mile delivery with the start-up’s ‘Delivery Management Platform’. Cost reduction, simplification of operations and a surge in brand loyalty are the perks which Bringg’s clients and partners get.

Bringg’s delivery solutions work on two core solutions, ‘Delivery Hub’ and ‘ROAD’, to ensure last-mile operation for its clients and partners.

“Delivery Hub is a one-stop multi-carrier management platform designed to expand shipping options and delight customers – while simplifying operations, reducing cost and driving brand loyalty. ROAD is a solution designed to digitise and manage all drivers and vehicles, for companies at varying stages of digital transformation – enabling them to scale last mile automation as operations grow,” the business stated further.

“Bringg enables a hassle-free delivery experience, offering convenient delivery options while still ensuring more drops per day. Bringg turns delivery into a unique differentiator for over 800 customers, with over 200 million orders shipped every year,” it reiterated.

How The Company Works

Bringg’s specialisation in simplifying delivery operations for global brands has earned the venture over 80 customers in more than 50 nations, with the product delivery milestone breaching the 200 million mark.

As of January 2024, the Tel Aviv-based start-up has set up a partnership network with leading technology vendors, expert consultancies and integrated carriers.

Talking about ‘Carrier Network’, Bringg’s delivery solutions have integrated themselves with over 200 carriers across the globe. FedEx, Uber, IBM, Google and DHL are some of the vital cogs of this partnership network. In fact, through its partnerships with the tech giants, Bringg is providing tailored and innovative solutions for its clients.

Bringg is known for providing top-notch delivery route planning capabilities, where the venture automates and optimises the delivery routes to reduce manual dispatching efforts and increase fleet efficiency. This step alone ensures cost reduction for the clients by centralising all resourcing needed to run the latter’s operation. Bringg, through its effective management of drivers, vehicles and depots, pulls off tasks like setting up driver schedules and creating delivery slots for auto-scheduling with ease.

Bringg’s delivery route planning also has a crucial element called ‘Time on Site’, where the venture automatically and accurately predicts how long each delivery job should take, based on which it optimises route planning to account for time spent on site, apart from simplifying complex deliveries requiring additional handling and improving fleet productivity metrics.

And yes, the solution is also equipped with ‘Real-Time Traffic and Location Intelligence’, which involves vehicle-specific routing that considers road constraints for each vehicle type, apart from unlocking traffic-aware logistics support and accurate delivery estimates that account for traffic conditions.

Bringg’s other disruptive product, ‘Auto Dispatch’, automatically identifies, plans, and manages optimal routes for on-demand orders, to increase fleet efficiency, minimise manual efforts and reduce fleet costs.

Aligning all order stages for the best possible route integration, dispatching orders to drivers at predetermined intervals, initiating order preparation dynamically based on estimated warehouse arrival time and assigning drivers based on picking-task status are some of the pros brought by ‘Auto Dispatch’.

Bringg is also known for its strong driver management policy. Through the company app, the drivers can receive and navigate assigned orders, apart from keeping dispatchers updated on route progress and last but not least, creating automatic check-ins and arrival notifications.

The whole thing has been digitised to support even complex deliveries, as features like video fast-scan, age verification, vehicle checks, voice assistance, and automatic pre and post-shift driver checks set the tool apart from its market contemporaries.

Bringg’s ‘Multi Carrier Management’ automates fulfilment and manifesting tasks, apart from assigning packaging and carrier options in line with predefined rules and automating labelling and documentation operations.

Bringg enhances customer satisfaction further with a diverse selection of dynamically calculated delivery options and pre-purchase quotes. These help the client to optimise his/her checkout experience and boost cart conversion by scheduling deliveries based on availability.

A good delivery portal is the one, which makes the package tracking job easier for its customers. Staying true to this principle, Bringg notifies its customers about the delivery stages, apart from automatically uploading Proof of Delivery (POD) to shipment records and enhancing driver communications for seamless coordination.

Knowing The Solutions

Bringg’s ‘ROAD’ is a solution that digitises and manages all delivery operations. ROAD caters to companies at varying stages of their digital transformation journey, automating and optimising every step of it and creating a seamless experience for drivers, dispatchers and customers.

Bringg’s ‘Delivery Hub’ ensures seamless multi-carrier delivery management and integration with over 200 carriers. Apart from streamlining shipping and returning operations while reducing cost and driving brand loyalty, the hub also allows the client to manage all carrier shipment operations from one unified platform, apart from access to a wide selection of carrier capabilities ranging from e-commerce parcels to construction materials.

‘Bringg on Salesforce’ helps the venture’s clients to get enlisted with a multi-carrier shipping app, that provides essential APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for shipping rate calculations, delivery date estimates, shipment booking, real-time tracking, and returns.

Bringg In News

The Tel Aviv-based start-up was honoured in Built In’s (the largest candidate generation platform for technology professionals) ‘2024 Best Places To Work Awards’. Bringg earned a place on the’ Best Midsize Places to Work List in Chicago’.

Built In’s annual awards programme includes companies of all sizes, from start-ups to those in the enterprise, and honours both remote-first employers as well as large American tech companies.

However, Bringg’s moment of reckoning came on October 7, 2023. As Hamas fighters stormed communities along Israel’s southern fence with Gaza, an incident which saw the death of 1000 civilians and the captivity of 240 others, the start-up’s software, which was used to manage the product shipments, ended up managing the rescue of survivors from Gaza border towns.

The post Start-up of the Week: Meet Bringg, the game changer in logistics sector appeared first on International Finance.

Trukker provides a mobile app to deliver instant quotes to customers, apart from facilitating real-time consignment tracking, and on-time deliveries.

“The best possible transport allocation. Instant pricing. Live track-and-trace. Real-time analytics. Find everything you need to streamline your freight operations on MENA’s largest digital freight forwarder platform for your on-road logistics. Each day, thousands of shippers and carriers optimize and cut costs, increase loads, reduce empty miles, and enjoy improved income on the TruKKer platform,” the venture stated further.

Decoding Trukker’s Operational Ecosystem

Trukker is attempting to stitch together a digital layer of control and transparency in the logistics industry through data-led innovations.

Trukker’s intelligent freight network, which as of October 2023, is serving over 700 clients in more than 10 nations, is smoothening out the frictions between demand and supply, apart from eliminating any load-related uncertainty.

Nearly 6000 drivers are currently earning 75% of their monthly incomes through Trukker’s platform.

“Our cloud-based freight solutions offer end-to-end coverage and a full-service portfolio for shippers, carriers, and businesses alike. That’s how we’re introducing shared efficiencies for all the involved parties in a supply chain. Behind the scenes, we cross-reference and analyze millions of data points across touchpoints and interactions. Our ever-growing data pool and AI-driven platform ensure continual process optimization with each transportation cycle for all our network users. At TruKKer, it’s all about delivering the future of freight now,” the venture added further.

Established in 2016, the start-up immediately captured MENA’s business landscape by launching ‘UAE Cross Border’ in 2018, followed by its branch openings in Saudi Arabia and Egypt in 2019. In 2021, Trukker acquired Pakistan-based digital freight booking platform TruckSher. In the same year, Trukker made its market debut in Turkey, Oman and Bahrain. A year later, Trukker’s branches were opened in Poland and Kazakhstan too.

Through the solution called ‘Move My Home’, the start-up helps Emirati families during their relocation by providing them live location tracking and status updates on the movement of latters’ assets. Trukker’s seasoned team of moving professionals ensure zero damage to these assets while relocating them to new homes.

“Our relocation experts offer end-to-end care for your goods throughout the journey and beyond while you enjoy an effortless moving experience. These skilled professionals can dismantle and rearrange your decor, fix necessary circuits, set up devices, and do paint jobs. You don’t need to do anything,” the venture remarked.

During house relocation, a family can request a quote from TruKKer, following which the venture’s sales representatives will contact the customer.

When it comes to moving the family’s belongings to the new property, Trukker takes a day to move the contents of a studio/one-bedroom apartment. For bigger homes, the process takes two or three days. The customer needs to pay 50% of the bill amount in advance and the rest on the day of the move.

Trukker helps businesses to find logistical and freight support in the MENA region without the involvement of middlemen and freight brokers.

By December 2022, Trukker established its presence in the West Asia. The UAE and Saudi Arabia markets are currently contributing almost 40% to the company’s revenue flow.

Trukker has three main digital solutions, ‘TruKKer Pulse’ for B2B clients, ‘TruKKer Load Board’ for truck service providers, and ‘TruKKer Driver App’.

‘TruKKer Pulse’, apart from helping businesses to ship commercial cargo, also caters to the needs of retail customers looking for movers and packers services.

TruKKer’s Load Board Interface provides truck owners and transportation companies with an overview of the marketplace, clients available for fleet owners to bid on, and analytics on their operational efficiency.

Through the venture’s solutions, the drivers and fleet managers in the MENA region can also upload relevant documents and manage their payments, stay connected with each other, store invoices, submit proof of delivery and manage warehouses.

Trukker In News

Talking about Trukker’s recent achievements, the venture earned the fourth rank in Forbes Middle East’s list called ‘MENA’s Top 50 Most-Funded Start-ups 2022’.

Through its presence in Poland and Kazakhstan, Trukker will now be eyeing to extend its reach into the European markets in the coming days.

“Poland and Kazakhstan are strategically located along the Belt and Road route at the crossroads of Eurasia. Poland’s convenient transportation, low freight costs, and high logistics performance index, which ranks 28th globally, provide favourable conditions for TruKKer to access European supply,” remarked Gaurav Biswas, while interacting with the Gulf News in November 2022.

As of October 2023, Trukker is being backed by large institutional investors including Mubadala, STV, ADQ, and IFC. The start-up closed a USD 100 million series C in September 2022 led by Investcorp, a large private equity firm with USD 40 billion assets under management.

The post Start-up of the Week: Meet Trukker, the Uber of MENA’s logistics industries appeared first on International Finance.

To carry out the strategy, the business recently finalized two different contracts with Olsztyn Mazury Airport and the Polish Investment and Trade Agency.

Just a few days back, the LuLu Group debuted its Italian sourcing, food processing, and export base.

To handle fresh goods including meat, berries, apples, cheese, and other packaged foods that will be shipped to markets in the Middle East and North Africa, the Far East, and India, the retail behemoth will build a facility at Olsztyn Mazury Airport as part of its new investment in Poland.

The envisioned building will house the company’s first Central and Eastern European logistics hub.

It will improve cooperation between Polish producers, suppliers, and contractors in the UAE and expand the availability of local Polish items on the shelves of LuLu’s supermarkets.

According to Pawel Kurtasz, Chairman of the Management Board of the Polish Investment and Trade Agency, the investment would also provide new prospects for regional Polish producers.

According to a statement, the logistics centre in Poland will significantly aid the growth of LuLu Group International’s business in Central and Eastern Europe.

The new investment, according to the statement, is advancing the company’s expansion, which will strengthen its position as one of the most significant players in the global retail market.

LuLu Group also opened its world-class sourcing, food processing and export hub in Italy, a move which will further boost the company’s sourcing operations from Europe, thus ensuring uninterrupted supply and price stability of food products.

Located at World Trade Center Malpensa Airport in Milan, the state-of-the-art facility will primarily focus on sourcing, processing, storing, packaging and exporting top-quality food products from Italy to more than 255 LuLu Hypermarkets spread across Gulf countries, Egypt, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The focus categories will include cheeses, chocolates, fruit jams, sweet and puff pastries, organic pasta, infused extra-virgin olive oil, and high-quality sea salt from well-known Italian brands. Apart from packed food, the centre will also source and export a wide range of fruits and vegetables, including apples, grapes, kiwis and olives.

LuLu Group, which has an annual turnover of USD 8 billion and employs over 65,000 people from 43 different countries, is currently ranked as the numero uno retailer in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and as one of the Top 50 fastest growing retailers in the world by Deloitte.

LuLu Group has similar food processing centres in the UK, US, Spain, Turkey, Vietnam, Thailand, China, and South Africa among others.

The post With new facilities in Poland & Italy, LuLu Group muscles up its European presence appeared first on International Finance.

Created through the Joint Venture of Qatar Airways and Spain-based Ferrovial Group in 2013, , FMM has been managing and operating the facilities management services of Hamad International Airport (HIA) since the latter’s opening in 2014. Being one of the Qatar’s most prestigious landmarks, the award-winning Airport daily welcomes 100,000 passengers. . In 2022, it was voted the ‘World’s Best Airport’ for the second time in a row by Skytrax.

FMM provides facilities management activities at HIA such as daily cleaning of a combined surface of over 600,000 sqm, conducting more than 20,000 maintenance monthly tasks and ensuring the safety and smooth functioning of over 120 km of roads and tunnels throughout the Hamad International Airport network.

“We feel so grateful with what we have achieved so far, as our main client portfolio is based in key landmarks in Qatar,” said FMM CEO Eng. Irene Vidal, while adding, “We manage iconic cultural facilities for Qatar Museum or architectural gems as the Smart City Msheireb Downtown Doha”.

The HIA project turned out to be a crucial one for the FMM, in terms of building its capabilities, and developing a robust platform for staff recruitment, training, and Performance assessment. This ensured a continuous service improvement as FMM keeps on investing in developing their manpower and technology.

“Training is the pillar of our quality services,” stated Patrick Ishac, FMM HR Manager.

“All our staff go through a rigorous induction program followed by several refreshment and specialization sessions that count for approximately 15 days per year. We focus on our procedures, health and safety, as well as customer experience management as we want our operational staff to be able to handle challenges without the constant monitoring of their supervisors,” the official elaborated further.

FMM’s staff training took a turn in May 2022, as the company launched its virtual reality training platform. When asked about this tool, FMM CEO Eng. Irene Vidal responded, “This opportunity came as a solution to a problem that we identified, as our new joiners were idle while waiting for their documents and training to start working at HIA, we decided to create a tool to train them remotely but showing the actual rooms of the facility.”

Hence, the interface of this training platform reproduces our clients’ facilities, and the new recruits are able to see their upcoming working environment and we train them inside much before they obtain their working and access permit to the site. This platform enables us to significantly gain in efficiency as our valued employees join faster than before,” she added further.
Since its inception, FMM has put its emphasis on technology, as the company kept identifying innovations like robotics that could improve its operational performances.

FMM, as of 2023, uses the world’s most advanced cleaning robots in HIA and the state-of-the-art Aisha Bint Hamad Hospital.
According to Ms. Jessica Jung, Custodial Manager of FMM, “With more than 2,000 cleaners working round the clock in our projects, the addition of such high-performing robots naturally boosts our overall cleaning performance and safety records.”

These cleaning robots have the ability to work continuously for six hours, with only two hours of charging time. These devices can also clean all types of corners and edges, something which is considered impossible for conventional machines. Moreover, these robots’ environmental performance manages a monthly saving of over 4,000 liters of water, compared to standard cleaning.

FMM also uses robots in the other daily maintenance activities to gain in time, efficiency, and safety, like cleaning of conduits. The ducting inspection, which is a time intensive activity, due to scaffolding erection and safety risks, is now performed by these robots, which are equipped with cameras and mounted on remotely controlled mobile platforms. These devices inspect ducts in a faster and thorough manner than manual methods.

“The high-resolution images and videos we obtained with these robots were not achievable before with manual cleaning,” said Juanjo Garcia, Senior Manager at HIA, while adding, “We are moreover able to reach areas which were impossible to inspect manually. At the end, it reduces staff downtime and risks while generating savings and better performance.”

FMM employees have also been trained on how to interact, control, assist and maintain these robots. When asked about the next steps of FMM, Eng. Irene Vidal, FMM CEO declared, “We are convinced of the promising future of robotics in Facility Management, and therefore, the team supports the idea that such technology will inevitably get an ad value.”

“Our next major step will be to support the State of Qatar of their vision about sustainability, for this we have brought electric cars into our fleet of vehicles which unavoidably will become standard. Then our long-term goal is to focus in providing upscale FM services to our clients while reinforcing and developing partnership with equipment and material manufacturers to remain competitive and as a pioneer in this industry,” she said further.

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To get those merchants and their products removed from the Amazon store, Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) filed lawsuits against numerous organisations that made thousands of fictitious allegations of copyright infringement against Amazon’s selling partners.

Kebharu Smith, director of Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit, said, “We realise how crucial it is for our selling partners to have a consistent Amazon store experience, and we will be persistent in our pursuit of bad actors that aim to undermine that experience.”

The lawsuits, according to Kebharu Smith, “Should serve as a caution to anyone who employs fraud in an effort to harm any of the millions of selling partners that deal with Amazon on a daily basis.”

The Western District of Washington United States District Court received the lawsuits. The Amazon Brand Registry is a crucial tool in this endeavour, according to Amazon, which aims to give selling partners the resources they need to assist in safeguarding their IP rights.

The Amazon Brand Registry, introduced in 2017, is a free service offering businesses several tools for defending and enhancing their brands.

According to Amazon, “With Brand Registry, automatic protections check over 8 billion daily attempts to update listings to proactively prevent infringing listings from going live before a customer ever sees them.”

According to Amazon, there has been a 99 per cent decrease in reports of alleged infringement by enrolled firms since the Brand Registry program’s introduction. The business continued. Around 700,000 brands are currently enrolled, and that figure is rising.

“These are only a few of the many reasons,” it said.

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The company said in a statement that the facility in Dubai South’s Logistics Zone will allow it to fulfil rising client demand and enable businesses to serve their customers more quickly and effectively.

Three fulfilment centres, three sorting facilities, eight delivery stations, and a network of small and medium-sized companies that serve as delivery partners now make up Amazon’s network of operations in the UAE.

During the holy month of Ramadan, Amazon anticipates a rise in consumer demand. Also, the corporation recently declared its intention to host goods from 100,000 companies by 2026, including local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs).

According to Prashant Saran, Director of Operations for Amazon MENA, “with the establishment of this facility, we are set up to offer even more products to more customers throughout the hectic period of Ramadan.”

The complex will comprise three kilometres of conveyance equipment, stretched across five storeys and covering an area of more than 350,000 square feet.

According to the announcement, “the additional capacity will give entrepreneurs and [SMBs] access to Amazon’s fulfilment capabilities and world-class logistics knowledge, supporting Dubai and the UAE’s goal for a digital economy.”

Small businesses can store, pick, pack, and ship client purchases using the company’s “Fulfilled by Amazon” service.

Meanwhile, Amazon will be shutting down its go-to camera reviews website “DPReview” in the near future after nearly 25 years of operation.

“The site will remain active until April 10, and the editorial team is still working on reviews and looking forward to delivering some of our best-ever content,” said Scott Everett, General Manager of DPReview.com.

The company stated that “the decision is part of the annual operating plan review that our parent company shared earlier this year”.

DPReview was founded in 1998 in England and was purchased by Amazon in 2007, who relocated the team to the US in 2010 to be closer to its headquarters.

The move comes amid the company stopping the sale of its magazine and newspaper subscriptions through Kindle Newsstand. It will also stop delivering current Kindle Newsstand subscriptions in September 2023.

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The Project for 50 is a set of developmental and economic projects which are designed to accelerate the UAE’s development and transform the region into a comprehensive hub in all sectors. At the same time, it also aims to establish the UAE as an ideal destination for talents and investors.

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum told the media, “The Etihad Rail is the largest project to consolidate the strength of the union for the next 50 years. It will connect 11 key cities and regions across the UAE. “The UAE’s infrastructure is among the best in the world, and the Etihad Rail will further enhance UAE excellence in the logistical field. The project comes in line with the environmental policy of the UAE and it will reduce carbon emissions by 70 to 80 percent.”

His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan told the media, “The National Railways Programme reflects the true meaning of integration into our national economic system, as we see the largest partnership between government entities at the federal and local levels. It comes to support a national vision to connect the country’s key centres of industry and production, open new trade routes and facilitate population movement, creating the most developed work and life environment in the region.”

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