Forwarders in India have deployed a new platform that could help transform the ease of doing business and reduce the logistics costs for the country’s local players.

The Federation of Freight Forwarders’ Associations in India (FFFAI) launched India’s first interactive electronic FIATA (International Federation of Freight Forwarders Association) Bill of Lading (e-FBL) initiative hosted on the CODEX platform, developed by Kale Logistics Solutions.

The platform, launched on 9 June, will allow freight forwarders to easily issue a secured e-FBL through a one-click process, removing double data entry, Kale said. It is enriched with a smart QR code that allows users to establish the document’s integrity, security and accountability. Each FBL document is registered on an immutable ledger and can be verified at any time by all stakeholders interacting with the document.

Members of India’s FFFAI can generate the bill in three ways. First is through API integration with internal systems to fetch the data into the platform. Second is through excel uploads. Or, lastly, using an innovative machine learning interface to pull data from legacy PDF or scanned documents into the FIATA format with more than 95 percent accuracy.

The FFFAI said the main objective of the group is ‘to organise united action to promote the interests of each member.’ “Deploying the e-FBL initiative will ease business and logistics cost for our members. This initiative is also in alignment with the government’s vision of digital India and paperless trade,” the group said.

Vineet Malhotra, co-founder and director of Kale Logistics Solutions, explained that the salient feature of Kale’s solution is standardised data exchange along with secured access capabilities.

“This will reduce nearly US$50 for each shipment with respect to documentation, courier and postage charges,” he noted.