GoBOLT, a logistics start-up that specialises in liquor transportation and counts United Breweries’ Kingfisher beer as its client, is set to soon sign two more — Bacardi and Carlsberg. The company is in the process of raising funds, and expects to close the deal this month.
Liquor logistics is a specialised area as trucks that move liquor need to have licences specific to not just days, but also routes.
For instance, a liquor transportation licence can be issued for six days and for a specific route for each vehicle. “So if a vehicle breaks down or is held up at the loading or unloading location, each truck has to wait 10-15 days to unload cargo,” Sumit Sharma, Co-founder, GoBOLT, told
It requires a lot of strategising to ensure less wastage of resources, he said.
While deciding a specific route, the company takes into account the quality of roads; it keeps track of repairs on highways and inform clients about it.
This leads to delay, as a rough road is likely to cause bottles to break.
“Recently, a highway was under repair in Rajasthan. So the customer chose to opt for a route that was almost 80 km more than the normal one,” Sharma said.
Calling the logistics segment strategic, as the debits can be very high in case a permit expires, Sharma said: “If the permit expires, the penalties can be as a high as 10-15 per cent of goods value. So the loss of one truck can take away half or quarterly profit from your book. So people have to be very careful while getting into this business.”
Liquor is a State-controlled subject and most of the liquor movement happens through warehouses that are usually managed by States, which have limited warehousing capacity. “So there are issues, such as, if trucks of UB and Carlsberg land up at the same time, whose truck will be offloaded first?” he said. This impacts sales and stock of government wine and beer shops, where the retailer can push one brand against the other.
Also, while liquor may be off the Goods and Services Tax, its transportation will need to follow rules along the lines of e-way bills, as proposed under the GST regime. The company feels its experience in handling transportation of liquor, which requires time and route-specific licences, will come in handy when it has to manage e-way bills, which involve issuance of duration-specific licences.