Mr.Aishwarye Dubey is a widely-renowned maritime professional heading a team of highly experienced Maritime Lawyers and Marine Engineers. He specialises in dealing with cases relating to shipping claims (Bills of Lading & Charterparty), cargo damage, demurrage and detention, marine insurance (P & I, Hull & Machinery), Customs Act and provides trusted legal advice and consultancy on maritime matters.  

Feel free to contact him – (a.dubey.maritimelaw@gmail.com)

                                 +91 9140174606   

The social milieu, in the Covid/Post-Covid era (i.e. in the present time), is largely being driven by sharing of knowledge through data interchange. This phenomenon has percolated to each and every modern sector of the modern world so much so that, envisioning a society without it seems an aberration. Newer technological systems such as NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens), Blockchain and Quantum Computing are the drivers of this socio-technological revolution.

Such a radical change begs for metamorphosis of the Indian maritime industry as well. This phenomenon demands that careful focus should be placed upon two aspects. The first one is the widespread and affordable dissemination of maritime knowledge and, the second one is the practical application to generate meaningful employment/job opportunities.

The first aspect of widespread, affordable and maritime-centric knowledge is a cause-of-concern for many reasons. Maritime education and training is quite expensive and there is a dearth of good-quality maritime educational institutions to cater to the humongous demand of the Indian maritime sector.

The second and most crucial aspect is the application of the maritime educational training to generate meaningful employment opportunities. To accomplish this objective, it is imperative to revamp the educational curriculum of the various maritime educational institutions. The spirit of inquiry and entrepreneurship should be encouraged by the institutions as well as the shipping industry by providing research-based funding to the young maritime students. This will propel the young minds to find problems in the maritime arena and propose novel workable solutions to such problems. The young minds of today are the most well-equipped to use technology (such as NFT, Blockchain and quantum computing) in order to brighten the lives and working conditions of the Indian seafarers.

Whilst carefully analysing the current scenario prevailing in the Indian maritime industry, it has been observed that, to transition from a net provider of maritime workforce to a global powerhouse of maritime entrepreneurship and innovation, there are certain pertinent issues which need to resolved in an exigent manner.

The first issue is the virtual absence of incubators who can nourish and nurture upcoming maritime-centric entrepreneurial ventures. This happens to be key element in the development and augmentation of the innovation pool of the Indian maritime industry. When an entrepreneur starts her/his journey, she/he needs hand-holding in a meticulous manner. Most importantly, the entrepreneur will be brilliant in the innovation and product development domains but, the same might not be true when it comes to implementing and augmenting the business model to scale. In this crucial domain, the incubators come to the rescue of the entrepreneurs by providing their extensive expertise and practical knowledge, in addition to providing market visibility to the product.

The second issue is the hesitation of venture capitalists and angel investors to invest in the upcoming start-ups in the maritime sector. The reasons range from it (the maritime industry) being an uncharted territory to the incomprehensible volatility in international trade. A recent example can be seen in the Russia-Ukraine War which has come as a rude shock to international trade and investment at a time where economies are struggling to get back on track post the pandemic. Such volatilities do upset the fine balance in international trade and movement of goods but, it must be borne in mind that such circumstances shall not prevail for all times to come. Hence, the global venture capitalists and angel investors must come together to pitch-in with their contributions for the young maritime entrepreneurs who will, most certainly, serve as the leaders of tomorrow.

Moving on, the third issue is the phenomenon of out-of-sight out-of-mind attitude of mainstream media with regards to the Indian maritime industry. The current and important developments in the industry hardly gather any air-time in the national media. With a coastline of more than 7500 kilometres, it is all the more important for the Indian media to cover the happenings occurring on the blue frontier of the country.

Lastly, the near absence of deep-tech innovations in the Indian maritime industry is a cause of concern. Deep-tech innovations are those technological systems which require an incubation period of 5 to 8 years, to be able to become commercially scalable. Such innovations require prolonged gestation periods and hence, investors (whether venture capitalists or angel investors) are quite shy when it comes to investing in deep-tech projects. But, it must be borne in mind that deep-tech innovations have, almost always, reaped huge dividends for those who have the patience to wait for it to grow.

Therefore, considering the aforementioned, it can be sufficiently concluded that the challenges and roadblocks in the journey of a maritime entrepreneur are present in sufficient quantities. The obstacles cannot be tackled by a single person or a group of energetic maritime enthusiasts; it requires a whole systemic and institutional change in order bring in the “blue revolution”. Starting from the private stakeholders to the Government of India, everybody needs to come together to transform the Indian maritime industry into a truly global maritime powerhouse.

Marex Media