Gautam Jain: 0:00

Green carrier evaluation and route optimizations is something which a lot of companies can work towards. And in fact, according to a recent McKinsey study, 50% of the carbon emission goals that the companies have, can be achieved just by switching to better routes, or better suppliers of cargo only if they had this information

Tom Raftery: 0:25

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the number one podcast focusing on sustainability and supply chains, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hi, everyone, and welcome to a brand new chapter of our journey. This is the very first episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. And I'm thrilled to be embarking on this exciting new path with all of you. Before we kick off today's show, I'd like to welcome a new supporter of the podcast, Alvaro Aguilar. Alvaro signed up over the past couple of days to support the podcast. Thank you so much for that, Alvaro. Much appreciated. Now, As we delve into this world of sustainable business, an area that's not just important but essential for everyone, I want to emphasize how crucial and transformative our discussions here will be. We're talking about creating a future that is not just prosperous, But also responsible and green. For those of you who've been with me throughout the Digital Supply Chain podcast, thank you for continuing this journey. And for our new listeners, you're joining at just the right time. Sustainability has always been a passion of mine, deeply rooted in my love of nature and technology. And now more than ever, it's time to bring that passion to the fore, exploring how technology can drive sustainability in supply chains globally. So, if you haven't already, make sure to follow the podcast, tell your friends, colleagues, family, anyone who's passionate about creating a sustainable future as we are. And don't hesitate to reach out with your comments, suggestions, or just to say, hi! Your engagement is what truly brings this podcast to life. As ever hit me up on Twitter, hit me up on LinkedIn, email me Tom Raftery at outlook. com. So, let's kick off this journey together, making every link in our supply chains, a step towards a more sustainable world. Now, With me on the podcast today, I have my special guest, Gautam. Gautam, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Gautam Jain: 2:41

Thank you, Tom. It's absolute pleasure to be here and great to be on the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. Yes. So about myself, I am Gautam Jai n. I belong to the city of country of India, and Basically, when I was in college, I got the, I was lucky enough to get into the best college of the country, which is IIT Delhi and I graduated in computer science from there. So while in college, I met my co-founders, Chitransh, Mehul, and Ayush, and we always had that dream, you know, at that time during our college, like Flipkart, housing.com were the big startup poster boys in the country and they were making all the news and we were inspired by them. You're like, why can't we make our company, which will also go big? So we start in third year of college, we started Plat, which was a broker to broker marketplace, which was a re in real estate domain. So by that time we had graduated housing.com, which was one of the large companies at that time. They gave us, gave us an acquisition offer, and we decided to join forces with them.

Tom Raftery: 3:45

Nice.

Gautam Jain: 3:46

So we, we worked in Housing.com for one year and, then we, at that time we left housing.com and we were running a small side business. In that small side business, we were buying goods from China and selling them in the US. So buying on alibaba.com, selling on amazon.com, we realized that it was not the buying and selling, but actually the transfer of goods from China to US, which took most of our time, most of our energy, and a lot of our costs. Right. So we reached out to freight forwarder's websites. We found out what they are giving, and we found there's a lot of discrepancy in prices. We found that like once the shipment was underway, we couldn't, we could only track the milestone level data. We could not track where our like a hundred thousand dollars worth of shipment is. While we could track our food via Swiggy and like cabs via Uber, which is only a few dollars worth, right? We can track them in real time . So we got used to the space, being from technology background, we thought, can we do something in the international logistics space? So we quit Housing. I in interned in a freight forwarding company for, six months to learn about the industry, and then we decided to start GoComet. So we started GoComet, and now we are, about seven years into the making. And I would say that now, like fast forward seven years, we have customers like Unilever, customers like Koch Industries, Sony, Honda, Centra, like John Deere, Motul, who use our platform and they manage their entire international logistics through through GoComet platform.

Tom Raftery: 5:19

Nice. And just, you know, to set a bit of a, a context for people, what is it that these customers you have are managing, when they're using your platform?

Gautam Jain: 5:32

Sure. So at Go Come, we say we are the world's number one easiest to use supply chain visibility platform, right? So number one, easiest to use is not set by us, but by industry peers. And like the software websites. This in the supply chain, visibility is what we provide through the entire processes of logistics. So when the company's logistics department, they think that, okay, I'm planning to do a shipment. Next month, or next quarter, or next year at that time, starting from that till they have procured the freights, they have tracked their shipments, they have like the documents managed through stakeholders, document coordination, and then the invoices, like when the invoices come from freight forwarders, they have to be audited. They have to be paid. And, and the reporting has to happen. So during the entire process is what we have, like four major products and four market intelligence products. So that's what companies use us for.

Tom Raftery: 6:34

Okay. And what are the, what functionality do these products give your customers that, you know, make you the number one platform?

Gautam Jain: 6:46

Sure. Thanks Tom. So the main, the main benefit that the customers get is, for example, a big challenge which companies faced before coming to GoComet was like, they're doing 500 shipments or like 5,000 shipments every month via 15 different carriers and 10 different freight forwarders. Now these carriers, when they have to know where the shipments are, these carriers and freight forwarders would all give results in different formats. Many carriers would just ask them to come on the website and track their shipments. So Go Comet gives them a single window where they don't have to track. We have the backend integrations. They just share which of their shipments are they have booked and rest, everything we do. We automatically track the shipments instead of like, they having to track 500 shipments, 10 times each shipment during the month like 5,000 times. Instead of that, they just put it once on GoComet and we give single window platform to easily know the, which of the 515 shipments are delayed, which I need to focus on as a VP of logistics I can do exception management and planning by exception rather than I'm letting my customers tell me which shipments are delayed for them.

Tom Raftery: 7:57

Okay. Nice, nice. And obviously, well, this is the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, so how are you helping customers with their sustainability goals?

Gautam Jain: 8:11

Great. So, sustainability is a big important part of Gocomet and, how we are helping companies do it. So before I go into how GoComet does it, let me share what companies are doing until now. So that's what we have seen. Now, the good thing is that the company's logistics department, because many of the customers that we have are the customers who are like publicly listed and either SEC has asked them, or the governments, as per Paris agreement have asked them to goals, according to like they have to be carbon neutral by 2040 or 2050. And many have many have like self committed goals as well. Now, the good thing is that the logistics departments also have targets that they have to know, they have to present that how much they are meeting their logistics, their sustainability targets, and how much carbon emission they're doing because ocean shipping and air shipping. Both are worlds, like very large part of, carbon emissions. And they are like very notorious in that, in, in the ocean shipping and air shipping. Right. So they, so the current state is that logistics companies, one of the companies I was, I, like we were, we were, we were working with. They were calculating and estimating their carbon emission spend by taking the annual freight spend last year. Right. So it's like, actually it was that rough, an estimate. It's like actually trying to lose weight by taking your annual spend on food last year. Right. So, uh, that's the current state companies don't know. They have only high level estimates. Even if they ask their carriers and freight forwarders, they give a lot of unaudited data and in different formats because everyone has their own format, right? So companies cannot accurately track how much carbon emissions they are doing, what actions they can take to reduce the carbon emission. At GoComet, we have the tools starting from planning and when the shipment is executed to tell the customers and share exactly, because we are accredited, we are partner Loon is accredited by GLEC and we share the carbon emissions based on the latest carbon emission factors of the vessels that will be used to do the shipments. Which will add up and share with them that okay, if they do shipment via the one carrier, that how much emissions it'll be. If they do by second, how much it'll be. It also calculates annually how much they have spent on it. So we are seeing that trend where just like companies have a cost budget, they also will have, are starting to have a CO2 budget that how much carbon emissions budget they can spend on each shipment so that they, and we enable them to choose the shipments carrier according to that budget.

Tom Raftery: 11:33

Okay. Nice. So taking a step back on this, how are you calculating those carbon emissions?

Gautam Jain: 11:43

Sure. So the carbon emissions are calculated because we know we are tracking the shipments. We know where it originated from, where it will go, where it is going to go. So we know the exact distance, exact route. We also know the vessels it'll take and how many trans shipments does, are going to be there. We know that, so by the vessel, we know how, what is the carbon emission factor for that vessel? Which, which is based on the fuel type it is using, how large the vessel is, what type of engine they have, which leads to a factor of like per kilometer, per ton of cargo. What will be the carbon emissions for this kind of vessel. So you multiply that by the, the weight in the container and the distance that is traveling will give the carbon emissions for that journey.

Tom Raftery: 12:29

Okay. Does the speed of the vessel come into account as well?

Gautam Jain: 12:33

Oh, not a, not a lot actually, because, I, I don't think that comes into picture a lot.

Tom Raftery: 12:38

Okay. Okay, because I, I had read somewhere that the carriers are modifying the speed of their vessels, reducing the speed of their vessels to reduce the fuel consumption, which of course would be a proxy for the carbon emissions.

Gautam Jain: 12:54

You are right, you're right. So all of that factors actually come into the annual carbon emission factor that comes in, and accredited by GLEC because, that gets calculated yearly based on what the, how the vessel performed last year. You also have to see what is the age of vessel because the engines have aged by one more year every year. So you calculate based on that whether the maintenance was done properly or not. Secondly, you see a lot of congestions these days, Tom, right? So when you see a lot of congestions, the engines have to be on. They are on, and the ship is waiting, which means it's consuming fuel, although it's not covering any distance. So all those factors come in, come in, like, and right now the seas in, in the Suez Canal, Red Sea, there is a disruption and we are seeing a lot of vessels in, because we are tracking, more than a million shipments, like 1.2 million shipments every year. So we know how many ships are there in the sea, how many are waiting, how many are just anchored there to be communicated, what are the next steps for them? So that increases the fuel consumption, the uncertainties in the supply chain.

Tom Raftery: 13:56

Okay. And the, the disruption in the Red Sea is that, is that because of the, uh, Houthis Rebels out of Yemen attacking ships?

Gautam Jain: 14:04

Uh, that's right. So it's, it's, it's because of the rebels attacking the ships. It's because the, the tensions are escalating with, with Israel, with Egypt. So, you know, so, uh. The geopolitical scenario there, is very tough actually for any large company because they are risking their entire vessels, which are worth like mil billions of dollars and billions of dollars worth of cargo on top of them. The alternate route is that they have to go via like the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. So that's, that's there in fact, you know, so this is a very surprising news, uh, is that like in 1967 when, the Israel and Egypt were at war, so they, Egypt closed the Suez Canal for eight years.

Tom Raftery: 14:49

Right.

Gautam Jain: 14:49

And, you know, there were no shipments happening at that time, through Suez Canal for eight long years. And, it can be a very big challenge for the industry if the geopolitical scenario goes in that direction. Let's hope not. But this is one of the big things which can pressurize the countries to do something which they don't want to do.

Tom Raftery: 15:08

Yeah. And both canals are in trouble at the moment because the Panama Canal is suffering from drought. So the levels of the Panama Canal are low. It, a lot of people might, might not be aware, but the Panama Canal is, is fed from freshwater lakes, so the the levels of it are, are based on actual rainfall. It's not, it's not as maritime as you might think. And so the, the, the Panama Canal is in trouble because of droughts. So the amount of vessels going through are reduced, the size of vessels going through are reduced, and now the Suez canal is also in trouble. And this could have big implications for the mileage, to your point that vessels have to do, if they have to go around the cape of Good hope around the, the bottom of South Africa and or around the south, the southern tip of South America, you know, that would add, that would add time to shipments, but it would also add to the amount of fuel they're using and therefore the increased carbon emissions. So, yeah, let, let's hope this is resolved quickly enough.

Gautam Jain: 16:13

I agree. I agree. It adds thousands of kilometers to the journey, which can be done easier, so can be done easier, and can can be done faster as well in lesser cost as well.

Tom Raftery: 16:23

So if I'm a logistics manager using your platform, Gautam, I can at the moment choose my carrier based on their reliability and based on their pricing, but I'll also be able to do it based on their carbon footprint.

Gautam Jain: 16:40

Thanks Tom. So if you are a logistics manager, and if you're not using GoComet, then even the reliability index is something that you will not have for the carriers. Let let me show what I mean, by that. So the As. Okay. So as you can see, the just. So on our platform, we have built, uh, this is the sailing schedules where you can actually see the sailing schedules of all different carriers. You can see what is the transit time. You can see what is the departure date, arrival date, how many trans shipments it's going to go through, and what are the routes it'll, it is going to take. Now this data

Tom Raftery: 17:24

Let me, let me hold you. Let me hold you a second there Gautam cos just for people who are listening to this, Gautam is just showing, sharing a screen here. So, be aware Gautam, not everyone is, is watching this on YouTube. And for people listening, there is a YouTube version of this, which is linked to in the comments, and you can check it out afterwards. Sorry. Proceed. Go Gautam.

Gautam Jain: 17:45

Thank you, Tom. So, this data of the various carriers like MSC, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, Hyundai is available on the websites which carriers publish. However, since we are tracking so many shipments, we know what is the reliability of the a particular carrier on a particular route. This route we are talking about, let's say, let's take an example, Shanghai to Los Angeles. So the data currently share shares that the reliability of carriers is calculated based on the number of on-time arrivals. So this particular carrier has only 32% arrivals on time, which means that like 68% of the time, your shipments will not arrive when they were supposed to. And the average deviation is five days. The average ET changes is one time. So you can see that which are the most reliable and the, uh, most, uh, unreliable carriers on a particular route for actually taking the decision that these are the, these are the, uh, vessels and the shipments I want to do take for this route. Also, is there the price? Because the price is a one factor. Reliability is one factor. Price is a second factor, and the third factor is sustainability. So in the price factor you can see that what are the price ranges and how it has changed over time. This is the industry benchmark. We take the top 10 prices submitted on a particular route or a particular country. And those are shared here, as an index, which we call GoComet Freight Index, to help you see that whether your prices are lower or higher than that price, right? So the very easy to, to check that, it's like we have made it available for free. Uh, you go to gocomet.com and on market intelligence tab, you can see the smart schedules to see the pricing and to see the schedules. Right. The third factor which comes is the sustainability. We are building, we are integrating our sustainability tool with the sailing schedules, smart schedules, where companies can see that which carrier has lower and higher emissions. Now, using this data, you can see that some carriers have like up to 80% more emissions, like up, you can save up to 80% more, in carbon emissions if you're choosing one carrier over the other. You would also want to know, so using the three factors of like reliability, carbon emissions, and the price, you can choose that which is the best suited for your shipment for your customer.

Tom Raftery: 20:24

Okay. And just on this, this one particular route, you're saying that there are some people who have a CO2 emissions of less than a half a ton, and others who are above three and a, well, 3.45 tons is, is the highest I see there, correct?

Gautam Jain: 20:42

That's correct. Only from this available data there might be more carriers. Yes.

Tom Raftery: 20:47

Wow. I mean, that's an enormous difference. Three, three and a half tons down to less than half a ton,

Gautam Jain: 20:54

That's right. And probably the reason for this is because there are two trans shipments in that data. So, in that carrier, so in that route, so when you're using via that route, like it has to go to one place and then it goes like get transferred to another vessel, transferred to a third vessel. And, uh, also adds up in that transit time, which you can

Tom Raftery: 21:13

Okay.

Gautam Jain: 21:13

scheduled section.

Tom Raftery: 21:14

Okay. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's, that's fascinating. And, so have you seen a lot of demand for this functionality within your product from your customers?

Gautam Jain: 21:29

Oh yes, absolutely. So, actually, we have customers like Centra, customers like Motul who have adopted this already and they are using this to budget for how much they can spend on carbon emissions, for a particular month. So our platform uses AI to actually calculate how much you have spent and to predict that how much with the current rate, if you don't change anything, how much you're going to be spend spending towards end of the year. So they can see that whether they want to make any changes there.

Tom Raftery: 22:02

And would they have historic data available to them? So would they be able to say, well, two years ago for this amount of shipments, my carbon footprint was this, but this year it's this much less or this much higher

Gautam Jain: 22:17

You are correct. You are correct. So this much less or higher depends on how much data when a company starts using. So all the data on GoComet, they can actually check and see the trends from this when they started using the platform. There are customers who has been using, who have been using GoComet for more than seven years. So for them, all that data will be available to see that, okay, I was spending this much, now I'm spending this much in carbon emissions, right? And this is my target. Whether I met my targets every year or not.

Tom Raftery: 22:45

Okay. Wow. And so, I can see then With, I mean, we're, we're shortly after Cop 28 and now fossil fuels are, we're, we're, we're saying we're transitioning away from fossil fuels. And fossil fuels are what are powering most of these vessels, if not all of these vessels still. So the the logistics companies have gotta be sitting up taking notice of this and saying to themselves, okay, I need to get my emissions down. This is one of the few platforms available to them to allow them, you know, choose their shipments based on their carbon footprint amongst other factors, correct?

Gautam Jain: 23:34

That's correct, Tom. That's correct. The biggest challenge that we see on ground. Now it's different from a challenge which is top down. So, top down, the goals are set. However, we need to give the decision making authority and power to the one person who is making that decision that which carrier or which route will this shipment go on? So until that person has the visibility, they cannot make a better decision. And the estimate will be back to the same thing that annual costs, spend will then be used to see how much carbon emissions we did, which is a very, very vague estimate and cannot tell whether we are going towards a better and greener supply chain.

Tom Raftery: 24:14

Yeah. Yeah. If the logistics managers are cognizant of this and start using this platform in this way to get their emissions down, that's going to put massive pressure on the shipping companies to change out their ships, make them more sustainable, or be prepared to lose a lot of business.

Gautam Jain: 24:39

I agree, Tom, and that is the reason why . the Paris Agreement is there so that everyone who is actually like, it's, it's a, it should, there should be a pressure on everyone who is on the planet to become more sustainable and become more carbon neutral. And I think when more carrier data gets available, like what, how much exact emissions will be there, then along with cost, it'll become a factor. And over time we will see companies spending more in R&D just like the automobile companies are now spending from the last few years. They're spending more in electric engine, electric motor R&D, and we are getting better results than, than the diesel and the gasoline engines, right? So that's how we imagine the world will go into where like, let's hope what we will see a major majority acceptance of electric motors even in the world while shipping. So that's, that's what we hope for

Tom Raftery: 25:36

Fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah, no, this, this is, this is really interesting. Are the shippers, Are the, are the shippers, are the likes of the, the Maersks and the Hapag Lloyds and et cetera, are they seeing a shift towards more sustainable transportation in the demand from their customers as a, as a consequence of these kind of things?

Gautam Jain: 25:58

Oh yes, absolutely. For example, one big event and transition happened towards sustainable movement was the low sulfur surcharge, which was implemented by these carriers, uh, by the carriers around 2019, 2020, when a regulation came that you cannot have more than 0.1% sulpher content in your fuel. So the companies had to spend more like Maersk and like the shipping lines had to spend more on probably cleaning the fuel or probably like reducing, its like treating it to reduce its sulpher content so that the content, so that it becomes accepted under the new norms. So they passed that cost and it was, like very big thing at a time to, to the, to for the shippers because their cost increased by like a hundred or one $50 per shipment. and, that was at that time about like 10% increase in the freight costs, of low sulpher surcharge. So definitely that change is happening and now we don't see that, for sulfur. Now we are seeing that's the same thing for carbon and that will definitely shift them to more sustainable methods of shipping and more sustainable engines and more sustainable vessels.

Tom Raftery: 27:07

Okay. Fascinating. And if you are tracking all this, I can imagine that you should be able to start producing some very interesting data on the global reductions in maritime emissions in the coming, you know, well, even starting from 2020 if you've been tracking it even before that you, you said seven years, so that's back to 2016. So you should be able to produce some fascinating data on the last seven years and the next, you know, however many years, on, on the, reduction in emissions from maritime ships. Is it? No, it's not just maritime though, either, because you mentioned at the start that you are doing air freight as well, correct?

Gautam Jain: 27:53

That's correct.

Tom Raftery: 27:55

So both of those, it's, it's even harder still, I suspect to get emissions down in air freight though.

Gautam Jain: 28:02

You are right. It's, it's harder to get emissions down in air freight. However, you would be surprised, Tom, that ocean shipping contributes more towards greenhouse gas emissions than air shipping globally combined.

Tom Raftery: 28:17

Is that just because of the amount of it that's done.

Gautam Jain: 28:21

That's right. It's due to the amount of it is.

Tom Raftery: 28:24

Okay. Okay.

Gautam Jain: 28:26

That's right, because 90% of cargo actually moves via ocean shipping and only 10% of shipments, cargo move via air.

Tom Raftery: 28:34

Okay. Right. That makes sense. Yep. Yep. Gautam, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Gautam Jain: 28:49

So I think one important, thing that I want to be sharing is that like green carrier evaluation and route optimizations is something which a lot of companies can work towards. And in fact, according to a recent McKinsey study, they estimate that 50% of the carbon emission goals that the companies have can be achieved just by switching to better routes or better suppliers of cargo only if they had this information. So I want to leave with the, this thought that if we do better tracking and give it in the hands of, the people who are actually making the decision, we can reduce 50% up to 50% of carbon emissions that we, that are currently happening and like achieve our goals faster.

Tom Raftery: 29:38

Brilliant, brilliant. Gautam that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. If people, by the way, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we talked about, where would you have me direct them?

Gautam Jain: 29:50

Sure. So if they want to reach to me personally, they can reach on my LinkedIn account. It's Gotham Prem Jain and I, I, I come right there at the top. If they want to know more about our company and want to explore the platforms, they are ha they are like, welcome to visit our website, which is www.gocomet.com, G-O-C-O-M-E-T.com.

Tom Raftery: 30:13

And where did the name Gocomet come from?

Gautam Jain: 30:16

Oh, that's very interesting. Uh, my co-founder Tran, was actually reading a book, called Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. And in that the fastest freight train is actually called Comet.

Tom Raftery: 30:29

Ah,

Gautam Jain: 30:30

So we decided to name our company Comet, based on that. And then, we got the domain. We, we thought that if we just keep Comet, then we will not come on the first in SEO ranking. So we added like Go to it. So became GoComet.

Tom Raftery: 30:44

Okay. Okay, great. That's brilliant. That's been brilliant Gautam. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Gautam Jain: 30:50

Thank you Tom. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Tom Raftery: 30:53

Okay, thank you all for tuning in to this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.