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Logistics aspirants should upgrade their knowledge and skills”
T Venkataraman
Managing Director, Goodrich Group of Companies Journey So Far Forty two years back, when I started my journey, this sector was known as the Shipping Industry. I had the fortune of experiencing multiple aspects of this industry, which later on came to be known as the Shipping and Logistics Industry. I have handled right from a single CBM of LCL cargo to fixing up post Panamax vessels; in the interim was fortunate even to own ships. The length of my experience was divided into three different companies which now I call as institutions or the alma mater. The first was with the pioneering Indian shipping Company, ‘Scindia’, then with companies belonging to the famed ‘Transworld Group’, to the currently owned entity ‘Goodrich Group of Companies.’ One experience that really stands out high in my career is, when together with my Co-Managing Director, R Gopal, I could develop and nurture Goodrich Group from a fledgling outfit to a massive collection of Companies boasting 14 different activities; all of them in Shipping and Logistics and a geographical expanse of 24 offices in India and 14 overseas. Today, the opportunity to increase my knowledge and skills is limitless.
Industrial Revolution The metamorphosis of this industry has been something which even the most knowledgeable or visionary among the Shipping Pundits could never predict. There have been sweeping changes, so much so that when one looks back we tend to wonder as to how the industry could survive without the current changes. Liner Shipping today is most dominantly done only in Containers (of different types and sizes) and burgeoning sizes of container ships and increasing number of mega terminals.
Message for Logistics Aspirants I exhort youngsters desiring to make a career in the Shipping and Logistics Industry to urgently upgrade their knowledge and skills as this Industry is advancing. Those among the youngsters who fail to do so might surely fall by the way side. They have to imperatively develop in the sphere of technology which is threatening to render most jobs redundant over a period of time. In various forums, today, Industry experts do not fear to talk about the building of the “Crew-less Ships”. Such is the vengeance with which technology is trying to render a “Dinosaur” of the current system.
26 CargoConnect - may 2018