Chartered Logistics is a road transport company that has spent three decades moving industrial goods across India, and it is now betting on a completely different business - financing ships out of a tax-friendly financial zone in Gujarat. Founded in 1995 in Ahmedabad, it built a B2B trucking operation serving factories in pharmaceuticals, cement, chemicals and heavy engineering, then in 2024 it incorporated a subsidiary in GIFT City to enter ship leasing, a pivot that adds a maritime-finance engine alongside its legacy fleet. The recurring approach is to own the asset that generates the fee - whether a truck carrying a full load of polymer or, soon, a ship on an operating lease - and to let technology and branch-level execution turn that asset into a service a large industrial customer will pay for repeatedly.
Business segments
Two engines at opposite ends of the asset spectrum - a domestic road-transport workhorse that moves goods for factories, and a ship-leasing platform under construction inside a financial free zone - each built to collect a fee on every asset it controls.
1. Road transportation: the factory-to-factory freight network
A fleet of roughly 300 owned and attached trucks carries full loads for industrial clients across India, earning revenue the moment goods are transported - a high-volume, cash-settled business where the truck is the unit of production.
- Paid when the wheels turn - revenue is recognised as and when goods and documents are transported, which means the company books income on every completed trip; a large share of these sale transactions is settled in cash, reflecting the daily, branch-level rhythm of the business.
- A fleet that flexes with attached vehicles - the roughly 300-vehicle fleet mixes company-owned trucks with “attached” vehicles sourced from individual operators, so capacity can scale without the company carrying every asset on its own balance sheet.
- Industrial clients, not e-commerce parcels - the customer list spans cement, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, FMCG, power transmission, heavy engineering and petroleum, all B2B relationships where a single contract can run for two years and cover tens of thousands of tonnes.
- Every truck is tracked, every branch is online - GPS-enabled vehicle tracking runs 24/7 for cargo security, while all branches feed daily MIS reports into a central system, giving the company real-time visibility on a fleet spread across the country.
- A contract that shows the economics - in 2021 the company won a Rs.35 crore order from GAIL to move polymers from the Pata petrochemical complex, priced per metric tonne per kilometre (as low as Rs.1.44/MT/km on one sector), with 50% allocation of the tendered quantity and a two-year term; another contract with GSFC covered not just transport but unloading from rail wagons, stacking, and even stitching damaged fertiliser bags.
2. Ship leasing: a maritime-finance bet inside a tax-free zone
A wholly owned subsidiary inside GIFT City has received its licence to buy ships and lease them out on operating leases - a capital-returns business that has nothing to do with trucks but everything to do with owning the asset and collecting the lease cheque.
- A licence to lease, not to sail - the subsidiary, Chartered Comcare IFSC Limited, holds a Certificate of Registration from the IFSC Authority to operate as a finance company undertaking “operating lease of ships,” meaning it will own the vessel and earn a stream of lease payments, not freight revenue.
- Built inside a special economic zone - the unit is housed in GIFT SEZ, Gujarat, with a Letter of Approval valid for one year from its date of issue, giving it access to the tax and regulatory benefits that make ship leasing viable from India.
- The parent put in the seed capital - CLL subscribed to the entire Rs.2 crore share capital in cash, and the subsidiary’s authorised capital matches that amount, so the venture is fully owned and initially modest in scale.
- A protective-agent side door - even before the leasing licence arrived, CLL was appointed in 2023 as the protective agent for a Dubai-based commodities trader, authorising it to appoint vessel agents and issue work orders for ship calls in Indian ports, which gives the group a foothold in maritime services while the leasing engine warms up.
Group structure and partners
A father-and-son management team runs a listed parent with one new subsidiary, no debt rating, and a related-party garage that supplies its vehicles.
- The parent, Chartered Logistics Limited, is listed on the BSE with a face value of Rs.1 per share and a paid-up capital that rose to Rs.12.71 crore by late 2025 after successive warrant conversions.
- Chartered Motors Private Limited, a related party, sells goods, services, spare parts and fixed assets to the company - effectively the in-house vehicle supplier.
- The group had no subsidiaries at all until FY24; the ship-leasing subsidiary incorporated in August 2024 is the first and only one, and there are no associates or joint ventures.