Porter, an India-based on-demand intra-city logistics company has announced the divestment of its FMCG Modern Trade business segment to COGOS Technologies.
This strategic divestment has been undertaken, realigning Porter’s business priorities and strengthening focus on on-spot demand services and technology amelioration.
“During the pandemic keeping up with the market requirements, Porter diversified its service offerings to cater to the requirements of FMCG companies. The Company has reassessed its business priorities and the divestment to COGOS Technologies stands in line with Porter’s focus on delivering an exemplary customer experience through technology enablement,” the statement said.
Speaking on the partnership, Pankaj Shroff, CFO, Porter said, “We have always been at the forefront of assessing and strategizing our decisions to maximize business efficiency. During Covid, we started multiple lines of business, including Modern Trade. After due deliberations, we decided to focus on our core business and found an able alliance with COGOS Technologies for the continuity of the Modern Trade business. We are positive that with COGOS capabilities and expertise in this segment, the business will scale to new heights.”
“This move aims at ensuring continuity of the business vertical with COGOS enterprise-led business model and strengthening Porter’s focus on its core business solutions. Porters Modern Trade servicing team accounts for close to 5% of the total workforce and all the employees have been absorbed based on the business needs of both the companies,” the company added.
Commenting on the acquisition, Prasad Sreeram, Co-Founder & CEO, COGOS said, “FMCG segment is a very crucial and essential business around the world. While Modern Trade plays a very vital role in brand visibility and revenue share for the FMCG companies, they have a critical challenge in delivering to Modern Trade.”
“The penetration of Tech-logistics in this space has been minimal leading to loss of opportunity and higher costs for FMCG companies and Modern Trade. With this investment, we are looking forward to organizing and optimizing the supply chain of the sector with our state-of-the-art tech platform and advanced delivery system,” he further added.
“COGOS has been aggressively working towards organizing the city-logistics market. With this investment, the company further aim at strengthening their platform to suit the demand of city logistics. They also aim at expanding their fleet to 50,000 vehicles to meet the demand,” the statement said.
Post this, COGOS would have the FMCG vertical operations in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Hyderabad, and will eventually expand this to over 300 cities that they are already present. Specific staff, vendors, partners, and customers involved in this division of Porter will be moving to COGOS now.
