Thank Shelat For SmartKargo
Back in
November 2013, Team SmartKargo (above) showcased its solution at the
Air Cargo Americas show. It was an attempt to woo air cargo stakeholders
to test the next-gen solution. With its state-of-the-art architecture
and low operating costs—essential, these days—it must have
impressed everyone who saw it.
Today, SmartKargo has moved on from its
initial client to include carriers around the world, some of which are
Indian. Projected as the solution of the future, SmartKargo is unique
in many ways.
“SmartKargo is unique in many ways—the
foremost being able to instant deliver real time information.
“Perhaps, what is more important
is the fact that it can be used wherever there is an Internet connection,”
says Jay Shelat, Executive Vice President, SmartKargo.
Jay, who enjoyed a distinguished career
at American Airlines Cargo and later at Jet Cargo, today has moved over
to the IT side. His enthusiasm for the industry has been rekindled—the
result of being responsible for overall sales development and marketing
strategies for a product that can accelerate growth and effectiveness.
“Airlines have typically invested
more in passenger solutions than in air cargo, for the obvious reason:
relative revenue.
“But as global trade has grown,
cargo has become an important—and highly profitable—revenue
source.
“So now airlines are looking to
replace older, less capable IT with a robust and comprehensive solution.
“In our case, SmartKargo is the
first solution that truly harnesses the advancements in IT and network
of the past 10 to 20 years.
“It was designed by MIT engineers
in collaboration with domain experts from the world’s largest
airlines.
“We are the only pure play, cloud-based
solution available globally with unlimited scalability, which removes
the expense of dedicated hardware and software—not to mention
allows you to work SmartKargo wherever you have an Internet connection—at
home, at a coffee shop, wherever.
“Moreover, it was the first system
designed to manage air cargo from start to finish, enabling different
stakeholders in the supply chain (shippers, agents, carriers, ground
deliverers, etc.) to use the same system and to have access—with
proper security, of course—to the same data, at the same time.
“And unlike older systems, SmartKargo
delivers transparancy with instant on-demand reports and other business
intelligence instantly, not days or weeks later.
“So SmartKargo delivers all the
functionality you would expect from a pickup-to-final-delivery solution—booking,
capacity planning, pricing and revenue management, scheduling, accounting,
tracking, and more.”
 |
“I
know,” Jay insists “that everybody thinks that they have
heard all of this this before, but with our common base available everywhere
we think we can advance the mantra:
“‘Say goodbye to paper, and
all its inherent limitations!’
“SmartKargo is the realization of
e-Freight. It’s built on IATA standards and is fully compliant
with C-IMP messaging.
“Microsoft Azure is a highly reliable,
scalable, open platform for cloud computing.
“Cloud computing has many players,
but almost none with as much experience and presence as Microsoft.
“The technology stack integration
Microsoft has been able to deliver to Cloud Application developers is
truly impressive and unparalleled.
“Convenient access to Microsoft’s
technical team located right across from our head office in Cambridge,
USA, played a role as well!
“Then there is the question of business
intelligence.
“This is another area where SmartKargo
shines.
“We knew carriers and other stakeholders
needed way, way more business intelligence than existing systems delivered.
“Moreover, none of them can provide
BI in real time—it’s always later, sometimes much later,
like the next week or month, because their systems are based on batch
processing. SmartKargo allows you to know now.
“How much did we carry today?
“SmartKargo can tell you today.”
|  How
about an IT solution for air cargo that instantly reports everything
along the supply chain and can be accessed on any lap top?
The old cargo pro Jay Shelat is
fronting a company called SmartKargo, which is marketing a system
developed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by MIT engineers, in collaboration
with domain experts from the world’s largest airlines.
“We are the only pure play,
cloud-based solution available globally with unlimited scalability,
which removes the expense of dedicated hardware and software—not
to mention allowing you to work SmartKargo wherever you have an
Internet connection—at home, at a coffee shop, in the air,
everywhere,” Shelat declares.
|
Pay
As You Go Scheme
“We understand that to make the
solution viable in emerging economies, SmartKargo is available on a
pay as you earn model.
“The SmartKargo pricing model is
unique.
“When an airline agrees to partner
with us, we customize the system to their needs and implement quickly
(we just went live with an up-and-coming Pacific airline in a record
80 business days!), and we charge a realistic upfront fee to get started—far
less, of course, than new hardware and a license and all that.
Tirthankar Ghosh
