FEDERAL EXPRESS INDIA
Background
Federal Express (FedEx) is the world’s largest express transportation company, with a presence in nearly 215 countries and covering 365 airports. It employs over 136,000 employees and operates more than 645 aircraft. FedEx was established in 1973 and is headquartered at Memphis, USA. The company differentiates itself through highly reliable, value-added services like guaranteed customs-cleared, 48-hour delivery for international consignments. Federal Express started operations in India in 1997, and currently operates ten flights a week from Mumbai to Europe and Asia. FedEx has an operations agreement with Prakash Airfreight Pvt. Ltd., which provides all pick-up, and delivery services within India. It also has an agreement with Jeena & Co. for providing nationwide customs broker capability. FedEx now services from eight centrers as against four centres earlier and has branch offices in Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Coimbatore, in addition to the current operating locations in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai. FedEx has also increased customs clearance capabilities from one gateway (inbound) to eight gateways (inbound as well as outbound). Also, FedEx clearance for high value goods is available from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Cochin and Kolkata. While FedEx Global Trade Manager (GTM) provides online consultancy on customs paperwork for small and medium enterprises, FedEx InSight™ is a webenabled application that automatically tracks customer’s incoming, outgoing as well as third party payer shipments, without the need of entering individual tracking numbers for each package. FedEx has also launched G-tracker, a hand-held PC that enables couriers to advise customers on countryspecific documentation requirements and provides information on service availability by country, postal code or city name in real time. Through its focus on IT solutions, the company has been able to offer several innovative...