Robust infrastructure is essential to lowering India’s logistics costs and making Indian products more competitive globally, said Sanjay Swarup, Chairman & Managing Director of Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) on Thursday.
Calling efficient logistics indispensable to the country’s growth trajectory, he said infrastructure remains the single biggest lever to strengthen India’s competitiveness.
Speaking at a Summit, Swarup positioned the upcoming Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) as a transformational milestone for India’s logistics landscape. Calling it a “game changer”, he said the corridor — expected to be fully operational by March 2026 — will slash transit times dramatically.
“Trains will complete the NCR-to-Nhava Sheva journey of over 1,500 km in just 24 hours — nothing short of a revolution,” he noted, adding that the DFC would catalyse a significant modal shift from road to rail, boosting both cost efficiency and environmental gains.
He outlined how CONCOR has expanded its infrastructure footprint to meet this emerging demand. From just seven terminals in 1989, the company today operates at around 200 locations, including 66 terminals of its own, supported by 4.5 million sq ft of warehousing space nationwide. With 410 rakes currently in operation and plans to cross 500 rakes by 2028, CONCOR is strengthening its multimodal network to maintain reliability and enable seamless end-to-end cargo movement.
Sustainability, Swarup said, is becoming central to CONCOR’s future strategy. The company has deployed around 250 LNG trucks and has begun using electric trucks for short-distance terminal movements, with advances in battery technology expected to widen the scope for EV freight mobility. Investments in electric equipment such as rail-mounted gantry (RMG) cranes are also under way to reduce terminal-level emissions.
He further revealed that Indian Railways has allotted CONCOR a goods shed at Sonipat to pilot India’s first integrated logistics hub — an increasingly vital model as customers seek unified, end-to-end logistics solutions. “Customers today want a single operator to handle cargo from origin to destination, without multiple agencies,” he said, noting that integrated logistics parks will be core to this shift.
Concluding his address, Swarup said the conference theme — infrastructure as the backbone of logistics transformation — is both timely and urgent. With the DFC nearing completion, logistics infrastructure expanding at speed, and green mobility gaining traction, he expressed confidence that India is poised for a major efficiency leap.
