Besides airport, the key challenge for us is dealing with airport officials, authorities, customs, freight holders and ground holders that together can create impact on time and temperature of the product. The entire management of airport handling team need to know what the special service is all about.

We have developed our own quality assurance system that ensures quality standard of each airport for delivering our service. If certain airports do not imply with the quality measures, they are not qualified. If one person or a department does it the wrong way, it spoils the product. Moreover, one cannot see the product getting damaged or spoiled like in perishables. Therefore, the difficult part that we face is to get everyone to understand the crucial requirements of quality standards, the knowledge and belief in our requirement. Even though the whole process of shipment and the chain is same across the globe, the mindset differs from country to country in convincing them about the nature of the product. If the countries have done freight holding for such solutions in the past, they understand how it is treated, but the challenge comes with countries that are new to this.

What has been the experience in getting customs clearance for biologics?

Handling customs is another challenge, especially in Asia. If the customs department is demanding that the container be opened and checked, we have to do it in certain conditions. Any exposure to high temperature can spoil the product, therefore infrastructure becomes a challenge where you need special arrangement to open the container. We try to educate customs officers about the product and we are gradually achieving success. Indian customs is most tight in airline security, so we are trying to work with airline partners, customers and government officials. We need support from the government for building biopharmaceuticals- friendly infrastructure.

We are aiming to build trust, educate people and make them understand our services, but it takes time. Our only objective was that quality and integrity of the product should remain intact and the customers have to let us handle it in our own way.