India moved more goods in September 2026 than in any month before. Over 141 million e-way bills were generated, the first time the count has crossed 140 million. Much of that movement is in the goods the economy runs on, like edible oil, grain, coal and fertiliser, and that is where the strain is showing. Yet these supply chains rarely break because India runs short of goods. They break because buying decisions react to the market in days, while logistics plans take weeks to catch up.
What drives those buying decisions is market intelligence: everything that tells a business what is coming, from prices, futures and import bookings to policy changes, festive forecasts and vessel schedules. It usually sits with the procurement or trading team. Decisions on which port to use, when a ship should arrive and how much storage and transport to book sit with the logistics team, which often learns about a big purchase only when the ships appear. Understanding why starts with how commodities are actually bought.
Why buying moves so fast
A retailer orders stock based on what it expects to sell. A commodity buyer also watches the price, which moves every day. When prices dip, buyers rush to lock in the lower rate, so cargo that would normally arrive over three months lands in one.
The trouble starts when many buyers make the same decision at once, and the logistics network finds out only when the cargo arrives. That is what happened at Kandla in September.
What happened at Kandla
Over the summer, oil for quick delivery was cheaper than oil booked for later months. Refiners, also expecting strong festive sales, bought heavily for August and September, and imports reached an 11-month high of about 1.54 million tonne in August. Demand then picked up more slowly than expected. Oil came into the port faster than it left, the tanks filled, and by early September at least nine ships carrying over 3 lakh tonne were waiting outside Kandla, some for up to 10 days.
But storage, trucks and rail were still being planned the way they were last season. Better planning would not have built more tanks at Kandla, but it could have helped businesses spread out arrivals, send some ships to other ports or book storage elsewhere before the queue formed.
Where the cost actually shows up
The waiting ship and its demurrage, the penalty for every extra day a vessel waits, are the costs everyone sees. The bigger bill comes later and rarely gets traced back to the port. Trucks booked for the cargo move on and have to be re-booked, often at higher rates.
Turning market intelligence into action
Closing the gap between buying and logistics starts with three steps. First, put procurement and logistics on the same numbers, so a large order is also an early alert for logistics. Second, plan for space, not just demand: before a big shipment lands, check if there is room at the port, in storage and on the road, and ask what happens if twice as much arrives at once. Third, share information early with ports, transporters and warehouse partners, since each of them sees only part of the picture.
Doing this across thousands of shipments a day is beyond any team working from spreadsheets and phone calls, and this is where AI earns its place. It can track prices, bookings, vessel movements and capacity together, flag the cargo likely to get stuck and suggest options such as another port, a later arrival or a different warehouse. This is the shift from a system of record, which tells you what happened, to a system of action, which helps you decide what to do next.
The next advantage is speed
India will keep building ports, tanks and rail lines, and it should. But the markets that move commodities will always change faster than new capacity can be built. The businesses that do better will be the ones that close the gap between what the market is telling them and what their logistics does about it, before the ships arrive and the queues build.
Published on November 15, 2026