Delhivery launches Freight Index One service for transporters

Mumbai, Nov 5 (PTI) Logistics services provider Delhivery on Wednesday announced the launch of Freight Index One service to provide historical, current, and forward full truckload (FTL) pricing estimates for transporters, fleet owners, shippers, and third-party logistics operators.

Besides, freight pricing is available at the platform for major trucking lanes and open and closed container vehicle types, Delhivery said.

India currently does not have equivalents to global indices like the Cass Freight Index and Freightos Baltic Index (FBX). This creates routing issues, uncertainty about costs, especially during periods of seasonal demand, and significant information asymmetries, the company added.

"Freight Index One platform is modelled from nearly a decade of market intelligence and Delhivery's internal data, including supply fluctuations, seasonality, route viability and economic indicators, such as fuel prices, toll rates and taxes," Rohan Anand, Head of Data Science at Delhivery, said.

Having a reasonable estimate of freight pricing is key to reducing overall logistics costs and increasing revenues for transporters and shippers, he said, adding that the company's aim is to bring greater transparency and structured information to India's logistics market.

"Through Freight Index One, we plan to open up freight rate data and forecasts to partners from the logistics industry, including freight brokers and shippers, and to partner with them and deepen the accuracy and coverage of the index," said Kapil Bharati, Chief Technology Officer at Delhivery.

Providing access to a wide variety of stakeholders will allow efficient price benchmarking and enable customers to better plan budgets and negotiate rates using market-wide data, he added.

This is an initial launch, and the accuracy of the index will grow as more market participants provide feedback to the underlying models, the company said. PTI IAS BAL BAL