Deccan 360 to be “bigger than FedEx”

GR Gopinath (right), chairman and managing director of cargo carrier Deccan 360, is so confident in its business model that he believes the company “should become bigger than FedEx”.

“We will be looking at the roadmap of how to scale up and at what pace. I feel the way forward is through small-scale industries and real-time management of goods. My dream is that every district headquarters should have a Deccan 360 connection.”

However, Gopinath admitted that the investment needed for much of the company’s expansion has dried up: “We made an attempt to raise equity in 2009, but the financial tsunami resulted in many of the companies we were in talks with to go belly up. The market has picked up now, and we have started talks with investors again.”

That investment has just been confirmed with India’s Reliance Industries (RIL) confirming that it has bought a 26 per cent stake in Deccan 360. RIL’s chairman and managing director, Mukesh Ambani, said: “We believe that our collaboration with Deccan 360 will see a transformation in the logistics domain in India.”