Noel Tata takes over as chairman of Tata Group's logistic arm

Tata International managing director Noel Tata after taking over as the chairman of group's logistic arm, DIESL, has revamped its board in view of expansion.

"Noel Tata has taken over as chairman of Drive India Enterprise Solutions Limited (DIESL), signifying the growing importance that the Tata group has placed on logistics," DIESL said in a release.

Tata has also brought in experienced hands to drive the next growth phase at DIESL in the board revamp, according to the company. He has "set the company an aggressive target to be not just the best in India, but also amongst the top ten in Asia Pacific in its segment," the company added.

The new board members include: KRS Jamwal, executive director at Tata Industries, and RS Thakur, MD and CEO at Tata AutoComp Systems. The logistics major has undertaken an expansion of the warehousing capacity from 4.4 million square feet to 6 million square feet in the present financial year.

The company said it has grown at 100 per cent in the last 3 years and had made heavy investments in technology.

According to Ajay Chopra, CEO of DIESL, over a five-year period, the company would be investing Rs100 crore in its IT systems as it believed technology would be the crucial differentiating factor in its business.

The company believed the average size of warehouses in India would rise from the current 10,000 sq feet as companies looked at consolidating warehouses for greater efficiencies, he said.

To cater to this demand, the company would be setting up warehousing hubs across the country, and in the next two years it hoped to have 9 hubs across India, including four mega hubs with warehousing space of between 2.5-5 lakh square feet each, operational across four large cities in India, including Mumbai and Chennai.