ACAAI brings its 50th convention home to India, opens doors wider than ever: Samir J Shah

President Samir J Shah on ACAAI’s role, the association’s agenda, the challenges facing air cargo agents, and why professionals must gear up for the future

The Air Cargo Agents Association of India (ACAAI) is preparing to host its 50th annual convention in Goa this September, the first time in over 15 years that the event returns to Indian soil. ACAAI’s conventions had traditionally been held abroad, in countries with strong trade ties to India, giving members a chance to combine the event with networking and a short holiday. That calculus has changed. Over the last four to five years, India has increasingly become a global buzzword, and the association felt the event itself should be held in India and should target the Indian market directly. Registrations opened seven to eight days before this interview and have already crossed 107 delegates against a target of around 250, even though the convention clashes with the busy AGM season of September.

While the event is being called ACAAI’s 50th convention, the association itself is actually 55 to 56 years old, having been founded in 1971. A few editions were missed over the decades because of a volcanic eruption in Bali, a war, and two years of disruption caused by COVID-19.

This edition also marks several firsts for ACAAI. For the first time, the convention is open to non-members across the logistics value chain, including customs brokers, multimodal transport operators and transporters. It is also the first time the association is inviting foreign delegates, with three confirmed and around twenty more expected. A formal media participation scheme has been extended to eight or nine publications on identical terms, offering table space for photographs, interviews, subscriptions and networking in exchange for promotional support.

The convention will also run a two-day business-to-business networking track for the first time, where registered delegates get a link to identify fellow participants and book meeting slots online, a way for Indian logistics players to find partners within the country rather than only abroad. The programme includes three nights of networking events, and ACAAI has an indicative confirmation from the Goa government to participate in the inaugural session.

President Samir J Shah spoke to Maritime Gateway ahead of the convention about the association’s widening engagement with regulators and state governments, the operational challenges air cargo agents continue to face, and why he believes English communication and domain expertise, not technology alone, will decide who thrives in the industry’s next phase.

How has ACAAI’s role evolved since its founding?

The association was built on a simple insight from our founders: agents who competed with each other stood to gain more from talking than from staying siloed, because a competitor understands the same operational pain points and often has different solutions to the same problems. That principle extends to how members deal with shippers, consignees, regulators, custodians, airlines and trucking companies, with an open channel allowing agents to flag bad actors and learn from each other’s approaches.

Over time, our remit has widened well beyond peer support. We now engage regularly with civil aviation, customs, the ministry of road transport, MSME, the Logistics Sector Skill Council, and increasingly with state governments on additional airports, facilities, manpower and capacity building for international cargo movement.

What role does ACAAI play in capacity building?

Empowering our members through information sharing and skill development is central to our mandate. We maintain regular communication on industry and regulatory developments, and we run webinars and meetings to help members adapt. We have just completed three training programmes in the last two months and are in the process of setting up an air cargo training institute that will go beyond basic cargo training to prepare the next generation of entrepreneurs entering the sector.

What operational challenges do air cargo agents in India face?

There are two broad categories of challenges. The first is infrastructure that remains insufficient, alongside a persistent shortage of trained manpower. The second is that existing regulations are often not implemented correctly, by either industry or the regulator, and our internal studies suggest that consistent implementation alone would smooth out a large share of current friction. Building and automating infrastructure takes time and capital, so we are engaging with investment companies and custodians on this while also pushing regulators to apply the rules in the spirit they were written.

What is the growth trajectory for air cargo in India?

Air cargo has historically been perceived as an expensive mode suited only to certain commodities and shippers. We are working with industry bodies such as CII, ASSOCHAM and local chambers of commerce to make the case for air cargo as a genuine alternative, particularly for exporters and importers in landlocked states such as Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, where seaports are far away and involve multiple handling stages. We tell shippers to always compare air and sea freight on a door-to-door basis rather than a leg-by-leg basis.

There is also a bigger opportunity ahead. If the government’s proposal to add around 150 more airports across the country becomes a reality, the nearest airport for most of the country will be within 40 to 100 kilometres. That will give a big push to e-commerce, courier shipments and smaller exporters and importers.

Is ACAAI seeking specific policy support from the government?

We want to be part of policy preparation, not just react to it, and most government policymakers do talk to us before implementing any significant change. At the same time, we try to remain neutral in policy matters even while representing our members, because logistics policy has to account for all stakeholders, not just ours.

How is technology, including AI, changing the way agents do business?

Digitisation and AI are facilitating tools, not replacements, for either the physical movement of cargo or the people who process it. Somebody still has to enter the data, understand the context and apply domain knowledge for any of this technology to actually help. My advice to the industry is to focus on two things: improving English communication skills, since documentation and processing largely happen in English, and strengthening domain knowledge, since technology accelerates processing but cannot substitute for understanding why particular data is entered at a particular point in a shipment’s journey.

Efficiency gains from technology could reduce headcount in back office documentation and customer service roles over time, as staff become able to handle a higher volume of shipments each. Beyond that shift, I do not see technology displacing the physical processing or movement of cargo. Both are only going to increase.

What is your agenda as ACAAI president?

My priority is deepening our engagement with regulators beyond our traditional counterparts of the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs. We have widened that scope to include MSME, the Logistics Sector Skill Council, the Bureau of Indian Standards, APEDA and other partner government agencies, along with a growing push to sensitise state governments on logistics, since land and industry set-up largely fall under state jurisdiction.

We are also working with the Logistics Sector Skill Council to bring more Indian colleges into offering graduate and postgraduate logistics programmes and certificate courses, while staying in continuous dialogue with airlines and pushing for greater support from risk management and financing agencies for our members.

Shah closed the conversation with an invitation to the industry to attend ACAAI’s 50th convention in Goa this September.