UAE – A gateway to global markets
Issue 18
December, 2019
In Focus
Made in China, Thailand, Vietnam and so on – these tags grace the garments worn by millions across the world, who do not even bat an eye at the arduous journey it has made across the seven seas. This is the power of the globalised world. Enabling this seamless movement of goods in this global village called earth is ECU Worldwide’s digital logistics platform, ECU360. The world’s number one LCL consolidator makes smart use of cutting-edge technology, to facilitate seamless cargo movement across the globe, enabling businesses to expand and giving customers greater choice.
Take the example of a shirt bought in New York City. It was probably designed by a California based brand, the cotton came from India, the fabric was made in Bangladesh using German machines, and the shirt was ultimately stitched in a garment factory in Vietnam. The lifeline connecting all these entities and enabling a global supply chain are logistics providers orchestrating and facilitating the timely and secure movement of goods.
Using technology to power the journey
ECU Worldwide, a global leader in the freight forwarding industry, is part of the lifeline enabling, supporting and driving global supply chains. The ECU360 product stack uses technologies like automation, cloud computing, OCR and machine learning to make the international supply chain journey seamless.
The journey of the shirt in New York goes through at least 25 different touchpoints: factories, customs, terminals, shipping lines, forwarders and authorities and more. Making this journey efficient requires seamless information flow across all these touchpoints. This is a herculean task especially considering some of these touchpoints are traditional and barely digital. However, ECU Worldwide’s team of engineers, product managers, designers and logistics experts focus on building digital products to make this happen.
Consequently, on ECU360, customers can get instant quotes – a USP of the platform, as well as accomplish other critical workflows like booking, and tracking. They can get instant door-to-door quotes for over 50 markets, while they quote and book in less than 30 seconds. It is due to these nifty features that over 7500 freight forwarders trust ECU360 for their global cargo movements.
Moreover, these services can be complemented with carefully curated value-added offerings provided by ECU Worldwide, such as insurance and domestic trucking for the US markets, among others.
Digital Transformation
The freight forwarding industry is going through a transformation with digital adoption and ECU Worldwide is leading this from the front. Small freight forwarders who would otherwise not have access to digital logistics solutions, are able to not only use it themselves, but also offer it to their customers. In this sense, ECU Worldwide is democratizing technology in the logistics sector, making it accessible to all.
Conclusion
The world today is a global village, where goods make a complex journey across the world to their final destinations. ECU Worldwide is making this journey seamless by leveraging cutting-edge digital technology to unleash immense value for businesses.
A technology entrepreneur, Jitesh Shetty serves on the Board of ECU Worldwide as Non Executive Independent Director. Jitesh spent the last 20 years in Silicon Valley building technology companies and scaling technology businesses. He has scaled products and global teams at internet companies like Yahoo and Google. He founded Qwiklabs Inc which was acquired by Google in 2016; he is also an early-stage investor in 17 deep tech companies worldwide. He has two US patent grants in the cloud computing space.
