In The Business Of Human Touch

Father of the logistics industry in India, Tushar Jani, Chairman of CSC India and Founding Chairman of Blue Dart Aviation, and his daughter, Bhairavi Jani, Executive Director, SCA Group of Companies, speak to Priyanca Vaishnav in a refreshing chat on shaping the logistics and supply chain industry in India and slamming gender norms

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When Tushar Kumudrai Jani entered the logistics industry in 1976, it wasn’t even in its nascent stages. There was no real industry landscape for Indian logistics. He begins, “That gave us the opportunity to create an industry.” Tushar goes on to reveal, “We were merely expected to get the job done at any cost. My father was with us no more, and I wondered how I will survive. That’s when I met my partner, Clyde Cooper, and then his friend, Khushroo Dubash. Dubash was part of the DHL team and was always teased that he would never go independent. One day the tables turned, and Dubash turned up with a proposition to start an agency. We took on a fourth partner who had an office and started Blue Dart!

LIFELINE OF A BILLION LIVES

In a time when DHL only transported key oil rig and the stray banking document, in three months’ time, the foreign principal was bought out by Federal Express (FedEx). Among the most distinguished delivery companies in the world, FedEx inspired the quartet to enter the arena of parcel deliveries — overnight, next day, and so on. With a limited risk of `30,000, the four partners shouldered responsibilities ranging pick-up and delivery, to fly-on-port courier and, of course, the paperwork. Tushar attributes this enterprising nature to “josh” (passion). “All of us would work through the night, party after-hours at Juhu, and be awake 20 hours a day. Our approach became the norm people would say, Do it the Blue Dart way. It became a movement and we didn’t even have to spend much on marketing. We were fortunate enough to have shaped the industry.”