Teleport: Orchestrating the Future of E-commerce Logistics in Southeast Asia

In this episode, we speak with Milan Dhingra, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Teleport, who shares his journey and the organization’s digital-first approach to solving logistics challenges in Southeast Asia. He discusses how a clear focus on practical innovation, an asset-light strategy, and a deep understanding of the fragmented regional market are essential to delivering a "faster, cheaper, and better" service. The conversation also highlights how a technology stack built on orchestration, visibility, and intelligence is key to achieving their ambitious goal of delivering two million parcels a day.

Teleport is the integrated e-commerce logistics arm of Air Asia, founded in 2018. The company leverages the unused belly space on Air Asia and over 50 other partner airlines to provide cross-border delivery solutions. Serving more than 85 cities, Teleport's network is capable of providing next-day delivery to 80% of the population in Southeast Asia. 

If you’re interested to connect with Milan or the team, you may reach them at milandhingra@teleport.it

Transcript

AIBP: 0:00

Innovation in E commerce Logistics is about making cross border delivery faster, cheaper and more reliable, especially at scale.

Milan - Teleport: 0:08

Innovation like Teleport is very simple. Innovation like teleport means, how do we make it easy for anyone to move e commerce, cross border faster, cheaper and better, that's it, and at scale and make these deliveries arrive as promised.

Unknown: 0:27

Agile logistics requires a flexible asset like technology stack that enables orchestration and end to end visibility across complex supply chains,

Milan - Teleport: 0:37

the right technology stack that allows you to orchestrate a shipment movement among different partners, among Air Asia passenger belly and among 50 plus other airline partners that we work with, and then being able to get real time visibility of data from all of these nodes and combine it together to know that you are able to give your clients and eventually the consumers, the end to end, real time visibility of where the shipment

Unknown: 1:09

is solving for market fragmentation and data silos demands a balance of deep localization and intelligence systems.

Milan - Teleport: 1:16

So these are the data silos that we are trying to break unify through our orchestration layer, clean it, derive intelligence on top of it and give enough information to our not just our customers, but to our operations team to take proactive steps and ensuring that teleport meets the commitment that they give to their customers,

Unknown: 1:40

from navigating fragmented markets to enabling real time orchestration teleports journey reveals that the future of logistics in Southeast Asia will be shaped by agile systems, locally attuned, powered by data and built for orchestration at scale.

AIBP Intro: 1:58

The aibp ASEAN B to B. Growth podcast is a series of fireside chats with business leaders in Southeast Asia focused on growth in the region. Topics discussed and include business strategy, sales and marketing, enterprise technology and innovation.

Vanessa Kwan: 2:22

Hello, and welcome to the Asan B to B growth podcast, where we sit down with individuals responsible for driving growth within their organization here in Southeast Asia. My name is Vanessa, and I'll be your host for today, we have a very special and interesting guest joining us. Milan Dhingra, the chief product and technology officer at teleport. Teleport is the logistics arm of Air Asia, leveraging the airlines extensive grid and network to provide innovative travel solutions by utilizing the underused cargo space, teleport has rapidly become one of Southeast Asia's largest and logistic provider, delivering millions of shipments and leave all pioneering new delivery technologies before we dive deeper into the specifics of innovation and growth. Madam, I'd love for our audience to get to know you a little bit better. Could you perhaps start by giving us an overview about yourself and your journey to becoming the cpto at teleport.

Milan - Teleport: 3:20

Sure. And first of all, thank you, Vanessa, for having me and giving us a chance to talk about what we are doing here. I started my career basically in the India region with companies such as Tata Steel in the outbound supply chain, which laid the foundations of for me, for the entire logistics and supply chain world, and over the years, through companies like Amazon, a bit of entrepreneur venture for myself, and with growth stage companies like far i and express bees, they taught me how to build quickly and smartly, and they also taught me that we need to be hands on, especially when you deal with this unique landscape of supply chain. Right? Teleport is actually a very interesting journey, what started as a LinkedIn conversation, honestly, and then I was attracted by the mission to deliver faster, cheaper and better and a more integrated artistic ecosystem in such a fragmented landscape such as Southeast Asia, right this is what kind of made me realize that all the experiences that I've had over the last decade or so building supply chain teams in India, I could actually come and deliver For this region. So that was our journey right now. As cpto at teleport, my job is primarily to lead both product and technology teams executing our entire vision, and we are enabling function that helps this business deliver 2 million parcels a day. That's our aggressive goal for. 2025 our core philosophy is that we believe in practical and purposeful innovations solving for the real customer problem statements. That's what our fundamentals are. I'm happy to answer any specific question that you might have perfect

Vanessa Kwan: 5:15

um, maybe for our international audience as well. Can you maybe give a little bit of an overview of teleports history, and then also, in your opinion, but kind of like the latest trends going on in the logistics sector globally, and how Malaysia is different.

Milan - Teleport: 5:33

Absolutely, teleport is an integrated e commerce logistics specialist. We started in 2018 with a very simple idea, can we consolidate the unused belly space on Air Asia airline Air Asia passenger belly to move cargo better. And over the last seven years, from that simple idea, we have expanded into E commerce. Deliveries started next day, deliveries with teleport next day, and then we have partnered with 50 plus airline partners today to not just utilize air ratios, passenger belly, but other other airlines, passenger belly as well. Right? It would be really interesting to know that today, we serve over 85 plus cities in southeast Asia, and our network can actually deliver next day deliveries to 80% of the population in Southeast Asia. That's what we are, and we are on a mission to move everything faster, cheaper and better. Right in terms of the entire ecosystem. What's happening globally, logistics is going through a very interesting phase of tech led innovations and disruption, where everybody is seeing talks about automation, AI driven orchestration, and more focus on supply chain resilience, but closer to home. We are part of an ecosystem with six, 50 million plus consumers, 11 countries and 25,000 plus islands. This provides for a very dynamic environment, with each country having their own customs, own processes, and a diverse ecosystem and building for this region, I think that is what is core to us, to kind of call out for success, that we are a region first company. So that's what's exciting that's happening

Vanessa Kwan: 7:36

here. Thank you for sharing. Innovation is clearly a driving force at teleport, but you know, measuring its impact is also just as important as fostering it. Maybe we can go a little bit deeper into some of the innovation efforts and how you and the team define some of the innovation initiatives that you are driving. Maybe we can start off by having you share a little bit more about what does innovation mean to you, to the team, and how do you actually measure the successes and failures of this innovation

Milan - Teleport: 8:07

effort? Fair enough. So let me put it this way. Innovation at Teleport is very simple. Innovation at teleport means how do we make it easy for anyone to move e commerce cross border faster, cheaper and better. That's it, and at scale and make these deliveries arrive as promised. Now we look at innovation as the ability to fundamentally disrupt how cross border is done today and how it operates today. We identify inefficiencies through data driven insights, and we objectively work towards ensuring that whatever we build, we solve for real customer problems, and whatever we do, it kind of impacts our customers and partners equally and create value for them, right? Furthermore, if I would like to drill further on this, I think this is very unique to how we drive things at teleport that even for technology, our road maps, the technology roadmap that people talk about, where here, every product and every engineering member knows how they work directly impacts, teleports, goals and mission. And that allows us to build those yard sticks as a huge measure of success. Because if you know that how you're delivering an impact with the company's OKRs there, it's very easy to kind of build that ownership and accountability and build those yards as measure of success. And success for us is measured by practical outcomes. How are you able to impact revenue? How are you able to impact volume of 2 million passes per day? How are you able to impact customer satisfaction? We all focus on learning quickly and we experiment and keep experimenting and learning. What will impact, what does not impact, and move on. So that's what the culture that we are building here. It's built on intent, it's built on collaboration, and it's built on rapid iterations,

Vanessa Kwan: 10:11

perfect. And you know, beyond some of the metrics you mentioned around, like revenue, C set, and when it comes to like fostering a sense of innovation within companies, I hear that's one of the bigger challenges that a lot of large enterprises who are embarking on digital transformation initiatives, I wouldn't say, fail, but it's a big challenge for them. How, or what would you suggest, or how, or what are some of the advice you would actually give to these organizations who are trying to cultivate a culture of innovation within their teams. And for you at teleport, how do you also encourage this sort of experimentation while maintaining focus as well, like you mentioned earlier, there are critical operational demands that you would require to maintain so how do you find a balance between all of

Milan - Teleport: 11:00

them? Vanessa, everything starts with intent, right? We all know how we impact organizational cares and we key. We really empower and encourage our teams to experiment with guardrails, run fast focus proof concepts on our sandbox environments and faster feedback loops that allow us to understand what actually moves the needle. So when innovation efforts are assessed using real time data and the key metrics that we try to move and impact, we ensure that new ideas translate into real movement on the ground, and we have improvements in our key metrics. So let's take stock some examples. What we have built is a very robust network control center. Teleport operates across seven different regions, and every region comes with its own set of processes, their own guidelines, their own cultures. So what you need to do setting here, you need to have a very robust network control center that takes into account what are key metrics across the board and allow to operate efficiently. Now we keep innovating in on those aspects to identify what are those key metrics that we need to move the needle on. And the faster the experimentation, the faster the feedback cycle, it allows to be divisive in our strategy, what we need to focus on to ensure that we are all aligned eventually, towards moving towards what teleport needs to deliver as a business

Vanessa Kwan: 12:34

goal, perfect. And for yourself as CPT own, I know some people call you the godfather of technology. Also, I hear, how or what would you see your role for on a daily basis, until some of your core responsibilities, and then, you know, bringing it back to our conversation around innovation, around growth, how do you see yourself, or where do you place your team when it comes to like, the larger roadmap of teleport?

Milan - Teleport: 13:00

Well, I'm flattered, as some people call me godfather technology, but honestly, my job here is to keep us focused and prioritized. The job here is to ensure that we find the right balance between striving for practical outcomes and giving that encouragement to the team members to experiment and go out and identify the prime problem statements to solve for so my day to day job as a cpto in this organization is to ensure that the entire technology and product teams move in sync and in collaboration with the entire organization, which means they don't need to run in silos, right? Which requires me to foster collaboration across the board. We have processes set up where in business stakeholders, not just operational, but commercial. They all work together to make sure that how do we deliver value? Let me just give example, a very large e commerce platform in China wants to dig deep and scale their markets here. Now this cannot be a one sided conversation. It has to be a partnership that needs to be established, and the partnership cannot only be on a commercial term, on the capacitor. The partnership often fostered and deepened by technology integrations. So if the E commerce platform needs to launch an exit delivery service in new market, teleport should be the right partner for them to leverage our technology stack to experiment launch and then scale in whatever markets they want to get into. And that's the culture that we are trying to build here. And as whatever the role I play, the role is to enable everyone the organization to achieve whatever you want to do and build for the ecosystem.

Vanessa Kwan: 14:59

From. But and is there any bad story as to why product and technology are pieced together at teleport MeV? I think this is the perfect segway interview, perhaps giving us an overview into some of the key factors that you the engineering team, are actually working on. Currently,

Milan - Teleport: 15:16

great question. What we do is, at the heart of it, our strategy is on three pillars, orchestration, visibility and intelligence, or gas station means it works. Visibility means we know it works, and intelligence means it works regardless. Those are very clear, simple principles that we build everything on Teleport is building a hybrid technology stack wherein, when you compare us with other competitors in the market, we are an asset light and a digital first company against all the competitors, which have huge investments in air freighters and logistics hub globally. So being asset light and digital first the right technology stack that allows you to orchestrate a shipment movement among different partners, among Air Asia passenger belly, and among 50 plus other airline partners that we work with, and then being able to get real time visibility of data from all of these notes and combine it together to know that you are able to give your clients, and eventually the consumers, the end to end, real time visibility of where the shipment is, and then with all the data that you get, using that data as the what do you say the data is a New oil, right? Using that data to really build proprietary algorithms to ensure that we bring in the right efficiency and the right visibility and the right intelligence to make this network so resilient that we are building a company an ecosystem to thrive, whatever the market conditions might be this is what we do. We we work a lot of proprietary stack to Vanessa and the proprietary stack. And because this hybrid technology, we are actually taking a lot of the ecosystem startups along with us. We work with a lot of startups in the ecosystem, wherein we believe that while we are building a stack for the entire region, but for localization, we go down the route on partnership with one of these partners to ensure that we expand and we reach quickly. And that's been one of the key reasons why we are able to expand so quickly across the region. You

Vanessa Kwan: 17:58

know, you mentioned three very key, very interesting key pillars, orchestration, visibility, as well as intelligence. Also, when you started off the recording, at the very beginning, you were sharing that the main goal, the bigger goal for the team is to deliver 2 million parcels daily by this year, essentially. And you know, speaking of value, you shared about like the hybrid tech stack that you're working on. You briefly touched on your product strategy as well. But how do all of this fall in place? You know, when you think about 2 million parcels daily, it's not an easy fit. How does it all piece together in your work?

Milan - Teleport: 18:33

It all pieced together with a lot of hard work, but it pieces together because what we are ensuring. So we talked about three large pillars, the aggressive reaching 2 million parcels a day, the hybrid tech stack and the orchestration, visibility and intelligence. And let's see how these three link together. When you talk about 2 million pass a day, it requires rapid expansion and rapid growth. Now, for that rapid growth, you need to be aware the fact that while you're building a tech stack which is fundamentally robust enough to look at all the seven regions together, but like I talked before, you also need to be aware about that what works for the region, and do you need to localize? I'll give you one very interesting example here, Vanessa, if you allow me. So when talk about supply chain, we talk about the traditional terms of first mile, mid mile and last mile, right? And there's been very interesting problem with first mile. First Mile is picking up the shipments from the E commerce hubs and taking it the nearest processing center before it boards a flight to move towards destination port. Now first mile, you talk about different regions. You talk about Malaysia, the entire culture is different. You talk about Indonesia, you talk about Philippines, and let's talk. About China, because, literally, China is still the E commerce marketplace of the world. Now we we partnered with the ecosystem here to deliver the first mind mobile first stack that our vendors could use to just log into the mobiles and mark all the shipment tracking possible. But when we entered China, we realized that this will not work there, and because we are able to adapt fast, we partnered with a partner called cargo technologies, who built with us a WeChat based application that allows vendors to just use their WeChat app, which is very common and highly adopted platform to use a WeChat app, or a WeChat program, as they call it. There, we use the WeChat program to log in, get the orders and do the first mile tracking there itself, which means while most of the E commerce partners in China still depend upon manual inputs from their first mile tracking providers. Teleport is uniquely placed to give them this data in a real time and as quickly as possible with no manual intervention. So just imagine that you as a consumer sitting here in Malaysia and and ordering for any of these large e commerce platforms, and your shipments coming from China, and you often see a huge delay in status is coming through. But if you're able to to talk with one partner for this end to end movement, and you get real time status updates on the fly for your entire journey, this just makes six we are so much better for you, and you being happy. The E commerce partners are happier, and that's what he's trying to do. So aggressive growth orchestration, meaning our ability to adapt locally and quickly, and then the visibility, meaning whatever the solution might be. We get real time information, we process it, we clean it, we organize it, and we pass it on real time to our partners and the intelligence eventually telling you that, hey, if you're ordering today, being what the date is, so if you're ordering today, and if you promise you that deliver person needs to get delivered day after tomorrow, it reaches on your doorstep as committed. That's the intelligence that part comes in all of these working together, clicking together in a very hybrid and an agile manner is where what we are striving to do and trying to achieve, and that's how technology is an enabler for business.

Vanessa Kwan: 22:44

Okay? And you look for yourself from a product from a technology perspective, what are some of the primary hurdles that your team faces? You know you mentioned earlier that beyond the hard work that is required for scaling your services reliably, cost effectively across the region, seven regions, if I recall correctly, you mentioned, what are some of the challenges you face, and how are you and your team actually approaching some of them

Milan - Teleport: 23:11

that the two biggest hurdles to operate in this region Are market market fragmentation and data complexity. Each ASEAN country has its own rules, custom processes, infrastructure limitation and what we talked about, the effort and our approach of deep localization fuse with shared technology. Infrastructure is what we are building, what we are building as a core system that just grows regionally, adapts locally. That is obviously the market fragmentation. Now let's talk about data and we battle silos. We actually are battling data silos by unifying the orchestration layer that collects real time data from every node. It feeds into our network control center, which allows our operations team to understand that which processing center of which decision country is not is actually not feeling good, is doing good where we need to add more resources in time if there's a peak season coming in, and I want to predict that will Kuala Lumpur have enough resources to kind of manage the load coming in? This is where you need real time data coming in and telling you that this Yes, Kuala Lumpur might need 10 additional packs on the ground to manage the load coming in and not act reactively on it. So these are the data silos that we are trying to break, unify through our orchestration layer, clean it, derive intelligence on top of it and give enough information to our not just our customers, but to our operations team to. To take proactive steps and ensuring the teleport meets the commitment that they give to their customers. So that's what we are trying to do, market fragmentation and data silos, which are a reality of the region that we operate in. And this is what we are trying to break.

Vanessa Kwan: 25:17

Okay, and where do you see some of the largest growth opportunities within the markets that you operate in, and also, how does the organization position yourself? You know, to capitalize on these trends.

Milan - Teleport: 25:29

I'm hugely excited. So I decided my my choice to come to the region and work with the region. It's hugely driven by the excitement of rapid growth of E commerce in the region. That's number one. Number two, how Malaysia has been prepping to be the strategic hub for supply chain movement in the region. And number three, the intersection of real time data AI and blockchains to eventually build something called as logistics, as an infrastructure for the region. Right? So E commerce. This is a region where, in the internet economy is poised to be 300 billion US dollars by 2025, with six, 50 million plus people. So it's not the leading to growth in E commerce within Southeast Asia, which is a very interesting dynamics, but also China into ASEAN, where Malaysia has a strategic hub and other countries participating is becoming that strategic transit point of movement of air e commerce movement, or the cross border air movement is going to touch this place. And then, obviously, with, with, you know, everybody talks about AI blockchain, and those are real movements that are happening that will change the ecosystem. So it's very much possible to deliver on a future of logistics as a platform. And this region is a perfect example where logic are a platform could actually be a reality. And eventually, I again, go back to the same point. We want to deliver faster, cheaper and better. And we want to make this e commerce movement accessible for every small and medium enterprises to have access to this, along with a large e commerce players out there. So we are building for the ecosystem. We are building for the partners, and we all want to grow together. That's how Teleport is positioning

Vanessa Kwan: 27:43

itself. I have a final question for you. Milan, in today's recording, you've mentioned faster, cheaper, better, if I counted correctly three, four times in this 30 minutes itself. You know when we when we talk about faster, cheaper, better. How is the team at teleport preparing your workforce, and also when it comes to like overall strategy to kind of address the emerging trends that you've shared earlier, the opportunities that you mentioned, how are you preparing your workforce to gear up 2 million parcels a day and to essentially be ready for the ambitious goals that the team have? Okay,

Milan - Teleport: 28:22

let me give you this perspective from the technology perspective, right? Our focus is that we are scaling by tech and by building better system, and not by hiring more people. We are a very lean organization. From that aspect, our tech pillars that we are talking about earlier, orchestration, visibility and intelligence give the teams very clear understanding of the areas to focus upon. And that's actually a leverage, because that allows them to think in a very clear correct direction. And when this happened, actually, I believe fewer people can do better, and then obviously, we are leveraging newer technologies, adopting them, and focusing on upskilling of the team members to help them become more efficient, more up to date and in sync with what's the latest trend that are happening that allows us to experiment with the latest tech and then moving the needle forward. We are it's all about investing in tech, investing in people. We are investing in infrastructure and automation to support the next day delivery at scale. So what I would love to call it right? That's the new thing that we call it internally. It's about building resilience. So. It's a building to adapt and not react. Teleport is built to survive, to scale, to be resilient, whatever the market conditions might be. And this is where it's not just technology. It's across the entire organization, all the pillars that we are believing on these fundamentals, and we are going deep into these fundamentals to ensure that we are building to scale and to be resilient. I hope that kind of answers the question not Yes.

Vanessa Kwan: 30:37

I think you answered it perfectly, and you summed up very nicely for our session today. You know? Thank you, mainland for sharing a little bit more sharing giving us a glimpse, actually, into what it's like to be the cpto of an integrated e logistics specialist company like you've put it quite nicely earlier when we started off. I think the main key takeaways we'll have for our audience today is really around the orchestration, visibility, as well as the intelligence, the three key pillars, cat pillars, maybe that you that the team is working on, hopefully we find, hopefully the audience will find the session we have today very insightful and useful. Certainly, 2 million parcels a day by this year, it's one that we are looking forward to. Thank you very much for sharing your insights with us, Milan, and we look forward to continue conversations and more success from you and your team.

Milan - Teleport: 31:30

Thank you, Vanessa and I, and I would like to also point out that your questions were really interesting. They really forced me to think about what we do, and how do we do and how do we make sure that we are it helps brings out the impact that we do. And to your session here, I would also like to do a reach out. If you are in the region. You want to do something interesting, you want to do something across all the technology and delivering big impact. More than happy to reach out to us we can look at ways to work together. So thank you, Vanessa, so much, and it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today.

Unknown: 32:10

We hope you've enjoyed the episode. For more information about business growth in the ASEAN region, please visit our website, www, dot IoT business, hyphen platform.com, you.