Sohan Lal Commodity Management Pvt. Ltd. (SLCM) is celebrating its 8th Foundation day this month. Founded on 13th August 2009, SLCM has in a short span of time emerged as a leader in scientific warehousing management in the country.
The year 2017 also marks 8 years of building a culture of trust, transparency and sustained focus on improving processes, technology and talent in line with the groups stated mission.
SLCM, a post-harvest agri-warehousing group, has operations across the entire value chain spanning commodity warehousing, agri-financing, collateral management and procurement.
The key differentiator and success driver for SLCM is its focus on the scientific management of warehouses as opposed to creation of new warehouse infrastructure.
The group manages a network of 2000 warehouses and 19 cold storages with a combined area of 36.87 million sq. ft. and throughput of 553.61 million MT.
Speaking on this Sandeep Sabharwal, CEO, SLCM Group, said “Our path breaking innovations such as ‘Agri-Reach’ and ‘Kissandhan’ and focus on scientific process management will help us achieve much more in the future. Our operations in Myanmar have proven to be a stepping stone for us to build a truly global footprint. I congratulate everyone at SLCM for accomplishing these wonderful milestones and on completing 8 years of successful operations”.
The company is backed by marquee investors including Nexus Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, Everstone Capital Venture, ICICI Bank’s EIF Fund, Creation Investments Capital Management, Incofin Investment Management, ResponsAbility Investments AG.
The group has a vision to build a global footprint across geo-climatic regions as the preferred agro services provider across the entire agriculture value chain. Towards this, SLCM forayed into its first overseas venture in Myanmar in 2014 and more such international operations are in the pipeline mainly in the ASEAN region.
SLCM has entered into tie-up agreements with 6 leading banks in India and 5 banks in Myanmar to offer collateral management services. The group is also accredited with three leading national exchanges i.e. MCX, ACE & NMCE. The Myanmar operation of SLCM Ltd. manages a network of 54 industrial zones, 12.90 Million sq. ft. of warehousing space and a throughput of 3.76 million MT. Globally, SLCM handles a total of 607 varieties of commodities as part of its operations and is India’s first and only group to manage 3rd party silos with 8 silo chambers, 696,960 sq. ft. of area & 100,000 MT of capacity. SLCM is actively looking to expand its global network and entering Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Africa where post-harvest losses are very high.
‘Agri-Reach’ is SLCM’s real time Process Management System, developed over a significant period for which a patent is pending. This system is agnostic to infrastructure, location, or crop to enhance efficiency and transparency. The efficacy of SLCM’s warehouse management system has been credited by FICCI with the potential to reduce India’s post-harvest loss of 10% to a minimal 0.5%. SLCM has also introduced the latest in warehouse control technology such as biometrics, GPS tracking, real-time data capture through SAP etc. The technology has enabled a faster TAT and improved fidelity in the groups warehouses much to the delight of its valued clients.
‘Kissandhan’ with an A - (investment grade) credit rating(CARE) is SLCM’s Agri Finance subsidiary and has disbursed over Rs. 1027.65 crores as loan and serviced over 28,294 storage receipts at 127 warehouses, impacting over 2,25,010 farmers till date. Kissandhan has a defined TAT of loan disbursal within 24 hours and introduced the co-borrower concept in agri-financing.
