Blue Dart Margin Improvement Backed By Cost Efficiencies

Balfour Manuel, Managing Director, Blue Dart How has been the performance for Blue Dart in Q4? The company posted ? 891 million profit after tax (previous year ? 238 million loss) for the quarter ended March 31, 2021 and ? 963 million profit after tax (previous year ? 383 million loss) for the year ended March 31, 2021. The profit for the year is, after absorbing the impact of special COVID-19 ex-gratia (? 342 million) paid to employees in September 2020 and accelerated depreciation of IT servers (? 240 million).The margin improvement is backed up by better realization and cost efficiencies during the year. Revenue from operations for the quarter ended March 31, 2021 stood at ? 9,662 million and ? 32,797 million for the year ended March 31, 2021. What were the steps taken to realize profits? In a highly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment, Blue Dart adapted itself to the situation and continued to be a Reliable, Resilient and Responsive organization for all its stakeholders. While the period under review has been challenging due to the pandemic, Blue Dart grew its revenues for the year, its market leading transit times, technology interventions e.g. Contact Less Delivery, robust & agile infrastructure, and above all its people enhanced the ability to deliver as the nation’s Trade Facilitator. What is the way forward envisaged for the company? In the year that saw disruption across various elements, we had purposeful innovations to keep our colleagues and customers healthy and safe, we worked closely with the Government on the Lifeline Udan Initiative. A stronger brand messaging was amplified with our advertising on television. We are cautiously optimistic about the new financial year on the background of the current wave II and the impending wave III of the pandemic. Going forward, our focus will continue to remain on consistently upgrading our infrastructure and digitized solutions to ensure that we optimise the man- tech combination. We are also enthused by the Governments initiatives aimed towards building a non- fragmented logistics sector.