Umang Shukla of Edgistify on Tech-Enabled Warehousing and Scaling India’s Supply Chains

In this exclusive interaction with StartupTalky, in light of National Startup Day, Umang Shukla, Co-founder and CEO of Edgistify, shares insights on the critical logistics and supply chain gaps in India that inspired the creation of Edgistify. He explains why the company focused on warehouse optimisation first, positioning warehouses as strategic nerve centres rather than mere storage spaces, and how technology-driven, omnichannel solutions are transforming operational efficiency for growing brands. Shukla also discusses the role of startups in enabling smarter, cost-effective, and scalable supply chains, the impact of AI and platform intelligence in predictive inventory planning, and what meaningful scale looks like for Edgistify as it aims to become the backbone of supply chain operations for fast-moving industries across India.

StartupTalky: What specific logistics and supply chain gaps did you identify in India that led you to build Edgistify, and why did you choose to focus on warehouse optimisation first?

Umang Shukla: When we started Edgistify, our initial thesis was straightforward: India's logistics sector, particularly warehousing and transportation, was heavily fragmented. We began by attempting to establish an ecosystem that would connect all stakeholders in the supply chain.

But over the first 3-4 years, we realised something more fundamental. The problem wasn't just fragmentation; it was that warehouses were being treated as commodities rather than strategic growth enablers, powered by intelligent technology. There was a massive capability gap. Most warehouses were running operationally but not intelligently. No one was thinking about how a tech-enabled warehouse could actually help brands scale faster, reduce costs, or improve customer experience.

That insight led us to pivot. Instead of being a marketplace or aggregator, we became a tech-first supply chain services company focused on solving problems for brands in their growth phase.

We chose warehouse optimisation first because warehouses are the strategic nerve centre of post-manufacturing supply chains. Everything else, first-mile, mid-mile, & last-mile, revolves around the warehouse. If you design the right network, choose the right warehouse locations, and execute efficiently from there, you create a competitive advantage that's sticky and hard to replicate.

Transportation, by comparison, is more commoditised. You can add value there, but it doesn't create the same level of strategic differentiation or customer loyalty. A well-optimised warehouse network, on the other hand, becomes foundational to how a brand operates and scales.

StartupTalky: Edgistify works with warehouses and supply chain partners. What are the biggest inefficiencies you see in how warehouses are currently used, and how does your platform solve them?

Umang Shukla: The biggest inefficiency we see is that people fundamentally underestimate how hard warehouse operations actually are.

There's this assumption that warehousing is simple, just pick, pack, and dispatch. But as scale increases, maintaining consistency and accuracy every single day becomes incredibly difficult. Getting things done through blue-collar manpower, consistently enforcing processes, and ensuring quality control at high volumes is not easy. When your warehouse management system isn't smart, or your processes aren't robust, inefficiencies compound quickly.

But here's the deeper issue. Most brands don't run their warehouses in an omnichannel way. They have separate inventory pools for e-commerce, quick commerce, B2B distributors, and retail, each managed differently. 

The other major problem is a lack of scientific thinking around SLAs (Service Level Agreements). Brands in the early stages often don't have a clear understanding of what SLAs are realistic or required for an optimised supply chain. They either focus purely on speed or they optimise for cost and sacrifice agility.

What brands need is a balanced approach. The highest possible SLA while maintaining cost efficiency. And that requires designing the supply chain scientifically, not just reacting to problems as they arise.

Our platform solves this by enabling true omnichannel fulfilment. One single inventory pool feeds all sales channels. This reduces inventory duplication, improves capital efficiency, and speeds up fulfilment. Our tech stack enforces processes consistently, provides real-time visibility, and allows brands to manage complexity without adding headcount or losing control.

StartupTalky: Many small and medium businesses struggle with inventory visibility and fulfilment speed. How does Edgistify improve inventory movement and reduce delays for these customers?

Umang Shukla: We’ve built our own in-house full-stack EdgeOS Warehouse Management System, meaning it can handle everything from mother warehouses to regional fulfilment centres, and it's designed for omnichannel operations across B2B, B2C, e-commerce, quick commerce, and general trade.

The key difference is seamless integration. Orders can come in from multiple channels, and everything gets aggregated into one system. There's no manual reconciliation, no separate dashboards, no fragmented visibility. The customer sees real-time inventory levels, order status, and fulfilment progress across all channels in one place.

This improves fulfilment speed because our system can intelligently route orders based on inventory availability and proximity to the end customer. It also enforces quality control processes automatically, so errors are caught before they become customer complaints.

But improving inventory movement starts even earlier, at the network design stage. We don't just plug into a brand's existing warehouse setup. We first gain a thorough understanding of where their customers are ordering from, what their demand patterns look like, and how their current network is performing. Then we redesign their warehousing network, deciding whether they need centralised or decentralised fulfilment, where regional nodes should be located, and how inventory should be allocated across locations.

This network optimisation minimises delays for consumers by putting inventory closer to demand centres. It also reduces transportation costs and improves delivery speed, all while giving the brand full visibility and control through our platform.

StartupTalky: What metric do you track most closely to measure the impact of your solution market coverage, reduction in order fulfilment time, increase in warehouse utilisation, or cost savings for clients?

Umang Shukla: We track different metrics depending on what stage the brand is at and what type of engagement we have with them.

Our primary objective when working with brands in the growth phase is to minimise SLA breaches across all sales channels, especially marketplaces. If a brand is flagged or blocked for SLA violations, its growth trajectory takes a hit. So we obsessively track on-time dispatch rates, accuracy rates, and marketplace compliance metrics.

The second core metric is warehouse errors. We measure this daily, weekly, & monthly and look for a consistent downward trend. As brands scale, these errors can multiply if processes aren't enforced systematically. Our goal is to drive error rates down even as volumes increase.

Cost optimisation is the third pillar, but it depends on our engagement model. We do two types of execution:

• End-to-end execution: We manage everything, mother warehouse, mid-mile transportation, regional warehouses, and last-mile. In cost-plus arrangements with actual costs plus a management fee, we also charge a percentage of the efficiency brought to CPO. Our focus remains on driving substantial savings for customers.
• Activity-based execution: When we're charging on a per-activity basis (per order, per SKU handled, etc.), the focus shifts more to SLA performance and service quality. The brand cares most about speed and reliability, so we track fulfilment time, order accuracy, and customer satisfaction metrics.

Ultimately, the metric we care about most is sustainable growth for the brand and a better consumer experience. 

StartupTalky: Logistics costs are a major drag on competitiveness. How has Edgistify helped clients reduce logistics costs, and can you share any specific outcomes you have observed?

Umang Shukla: Here's the thing about logistics costs: you can't just pinpoint one area and say, "This is expensive, let's fix it." High logistics costs are usually a symptom of poor network design. It's not one inefficiency; it's how the entire supply chain has been architected.

Our approach is simple but methodical. When we onboard a customer, we start by analysing their comprehensive data. We don't force-fit them into our existing warehouse locations. Instead, we analyse their specific data and design the most optimised network for them.

This is crucial: we don't try to fill our warehouses wherever they happen to be. We design the right network for the customer first, then figure out if our existing warehouses fit that design or if we need to add new locations. It's customer-driven, not capacity-driven. That data-first approach is our biggest priority during onboarding, and it's what allows us to deliver real cost savings rather than incremental improvements.

Take three very different clients: a rooftop solar company where we redesigned their entire network from 4 to 17 locations. A premium diaper brand where we centralised high-volume orders from marketplaces and quick-commerce. And a high-volume packaged spice brand where Intelligent Inventory Balancing automatically plans transfers based on sales velocity, ensuring distributors get shipments on time and quick-commerce orders are fulfilled within two hours. Across all three, we restructured their supply chains from the ground up, redesigning networks, deploying our tech stack, optimising inventory placement, and delivering consistently better SLA performance and measurable cost savings through reduced transportation expenses, lower inventory holding costs, and eliminating operational inefficiencies.

Across all these clients, the pattern is the same. The results? Consistently better SLA performance (fewer marketplace violations, faster fulfilment) and measurable cost savings through reduced transportation expenses, lower inventory holding costs, and eliminated operational inefficiencies. 

StartupTalky: Edgistify recently raised a pre-Series A round. Where is this capital being deployed first: platform improvements, warehouse expansion, or customer acquisition, and what impact do you expect from it in the next 12 months?

Umang Shukla: Our focus is clear: customer acquisition and platform improvement. Warehouse expansion will happen, but as a consequence of growth, not as a lead strategy.

Right now, we're working with 60+ enterprise clients. Over the next 12 months, our goal is to scale to 200 customers. This goal is driven by the strength of our tech stack and the operational model we've proven.

On the platform side, we're doubling down on AI. Our tech stack is already robust, but we want to empower our brands even further by incorporating various levels of AI, demand forecasting, automated exception management, predictive inventory planning, and intelligent route optimisation. The goal is to make our platform not just operational but predictive and proactive, so brands can stay ahead of problems rather than reacting to them.

Warehouse expansion will follow demand. As we onboard new customers, we'll add locations based on their network requirements and not the other way around. 

The impact we expect? By this time next year, we should have 3x the customer base, a significantly smarter platform powered by AI, and a reputation as the go-to supply chain partner for brands scaling in India. That's the 12-month vision.

StartupTalky: As India marks National Startup Day, logistics is widely seen as a bottleneck in domestic supply chains. Based on your experience, where do you think startups can have the biggest impact in solving India’s logistics challenges?

Umang Shukla: The biggest opportunity for startups isn't in building more aggregator platforms or last-mile delivery networks. Those are crowded spaces solving symptoms, not root causes.

The real impact will come from startups that focus on operational intelligence and execution capability. India's logistics infrastructure isn't just fragmented; it's operationally immature. Most players can move goods from point A to point B, but very few can do it consistently, accurately, and cost-efficiently at scale.

Three areas stand out:

First, warehouse operations and network design. This is still massively underserved. Most brands don't know where to place inventory, how to balance stock levels, or how to run omnichannel fulfilment. Startups that can bring scientific thinking to warehouse networks, not just warehouse space, will create defensible value.

Second, tech stack deployment for SMEs. Large enterprises can afford custom solutions, but the vast middle market of growing brands has no access to intelligent systems. They're stuck with basic ERPs or Excel sheets. Startups that can democratise sophisticated supply chain tech, WMS, TMS, and demand forecasting will unlock massive efficiency gains across thousands of companies.

Third, integration and interoperability. India's supply chain runs on disconnected systems. Orders come from ten different channels, inventory sits in five different warehouses, and nothing talks to each other. The startup that solves real-time data integration across fragmented stakeholders, not through aggregation but through intelligent middleware, will solve a trillion-dollar problem.

The common thread is that startups need to go deeper, not wider. Don't try to own every warehouse or every truck. Build the intelligence layer that makes existing infrastructure work better. That's where sustainable impact and defensible business models will emerge.

StartupTalky: Looking ahead, what does meaningful scale look like for Edgistify's wider geographic reach, deeper service offerings, such as demand forecasting or becoming the core supply chain layer for fast-moving industries?

Umang Shukla: Meaningful scale for us isn't about being everywhere geographically or offering every possible service. It's about becoming indispensable to a specific segment: brands in their growth phase who need their supply chain to be a competitive advantage, not just a cost centre.

In the next 3-5 years, scale means three things:

First, solutions-based approach. We want to be the core supply chain layer. That means owning the entire fulfilment stack, warehouse network design, inventory intelligence, omnichannel execution, and continuous optimisation. When a brand thinks about scaling from INR 50 crore to INR 500 crore in revenue, Edgistify should be the infrastructure that makes that possible.

Second, platform intelligence. We're already building toward this with AI integration. But the vision is bigger. Our platform should autonomously predict demand spikes, rebalance inventory before stockouts happen, identify cost leakage in real-time, and recommend network changes as customer geography shifts. We want to move from reactive execution to proactive supply chain management. The brands that work with us shouldn't need a large in-house supply chain team because our platform handles the complexity.

Third, category leadership in fast-moving industries. We've proven the model in FMCG, personal care, and consumer durables. The next phase is to dominate in high-growth categories. D2C brands are scaling rapidly, quick-commerce-heavy categories where speed is non-negotiable, and omnichannel retailers who need seamless inventory flow between online and offline.

Geographic expansion will happen, but it'll follow customer demand. 

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