THE FUTURE OF MARITIME LOGISTICS
CMA CGM’s Nayantara Mehta on reshaping trade through innovation and technology
BY ANOUK DYUSSEMBAYEVA
OCT 14, 2025
Nayantara Mehta isn’t new to supply chain innovations. Starting her career in 2018 at Bigbasket — now part of the TATA Enterprise — she was responsible for process and innovation for the fresh produce category. With the company being one of the first players in India to organize the whole fruits and vegetables supply chain, Nayantara worked on enhancing processes and technology to enable sourcing directly from farmers, thereby providing better pricing and fresher produce to the customer, eating away all the middlemen costs.
During the four years that she orchestrated the different strategic initiatives from farm to folk, the team cut down customer delivery from 48 hours to 12+ hours and reduced operational cost by 5%. This became possible only through disrupting the whole network. “Instead of having inventory at multiple locations, moving it to distribution centers and further to dark stores near people’s homes, we just cross-docked in the DC and did the packing in dark stores,” Mehta explains. They also achieved this by setting up farmer connections at over 50+ locations pan-India, identifying the right farmers, training them on quality standards, and monitoring their yield.
Working with imports from all over the world, she realized she wanted to further understand how global supply chains work and how they’re orchestrated. Nayantara went on to do a Master’s in supply chain management at MIT, specializing in digital product management from MIT Sloan School of Management, and landed a role leading innovation at CMA CGM, one of the biggest maritime companies. To note, the shipping company’s 620 vessels serve more than 420 ports and carried almost 22 million TEUs in 2023.
Having been on different sides of the global supply chain processes, the executive shared her outlook on the current maritime logistics climate, what’s to come, and the challenging opportunities that await new startups.
During the four years that she orchestrated the different strategic initiatives from farm to folk, the team cut down customer delivery from 48 hours to 12+ hours and reduced operational cost by 5%. This became possible only through disrupting the whole network. “Instead of having inventory at multiple locations, moving it to distribution centers and further to dark stores near people’s homes, we just cross-docked in the DC and did the packing in dark stores,” Mehta explains. They also achieved this by setting up farmer connections at over 50+ locations pan-India, identifying the right farmers, training them on quality standards, and monitoring their yield.
Working with imports from all over the world, she realized she wanted to further understand how global supply chains work and how they’re orchestrated. Nayantara went on to do a Master’s in supply chain management at MIT, specializing in digital product management from MIT Sloan School of Management, and landed a role leading innovation at CMA CGM, one of the biggest maritime companies. To note, the shipping company’s 620 vessels serve more than 420 ports and carried almost 22 million TEUs in 2023.
Having been on different sides of the global supply chain processes, the executive shared her outlook on the current maritime logistics climate, what’s to come, and the challenging opportunities that await new startups.
STRUCTURING INNOVATION
To drive the company forward, Mehta and her team enhance internal processes and technologies as well as leverage partnerships with external startups. “This can be everything related to operation excellence, customer / employee experience, new revenue generation, and sustainability,” she says. No matter what the team is trying to tackle, however, the innovation process always begins with the “why” to really get to the crux of the problem instead of jumping to solutions. Other important aspects include a clear understanding of business drivers and priorities, from which a proof of concept can be derived.
PoCs are intentionally scoped narrowly, having a set success criteria — ROI, initial launch costs, and scalability — to analyze potential impact. “Not every emerging technology will provide value,” the executive shares. “We prioritize based on business impact using structured frameworks like Impact vs Effort matrix and RICE matrix, evaluating reach, impact, confidence, and effort.”
PoCs are intentionally scoped narrowly, having a set success criteria — ROI, initial launch costs, and scalability — to analyze potential impact. “Not every emerging technology will provide value,” the executive shares. “We prioritize based on business impact using structured frameworks like Impact vs Effort matrix and RICE matrix, evaluating reach, impact, confidence, and effort.”
GEOPOLITICS & COMPLEXITIES
At the same time, geopolitical volatility plays a crucial role in decision-making and prioritization. As the executive says, anything that involves geopolitics and security immediately becomes a #1 priority — without that, you can’t do business. For instance, the Strait of Hormuz — through which 20% of global oil and gas trade passes — is currently of great attention as it requires risk management strategies to protect seafarers and vessels.
Today, trade flows and market tendencies are shifting, especially given the changing compliance requirements as supply chains expand to new geographies. As factors like fluctuating tariffs and bunkering charges change, precise documentation is required. Nayantara sees a big opportunity for startups in this sector: “shipping is a documentation-intensive business, so find[ing] tech that’s viable to process so much information at [competitive and efficient] pricing and orchestrating processes to bring in additional savings is key.”
Today, trade flows and market tendencies are shifting, especially given the changing compliance requirements as supply chains expand to new geographies. As factors like fluctuating tariffs and bunkering charges change, precise documentation is required. Nayantara sees a big opportunity for startups in this sector: “shipping is a documentation-intensive business, so find[ing] tech that’s viable to process so much information at [competitive and efficient] pricing and orchestrating processes to bring in additional savings is key.”
NEW OPPORTUNITIES
Volumes and freight rates will continue to fluctuate, and any sort of geopolitical instability will make the trends more difficult to predict. From Nayantara’s perspective, this gives a lot of space for companies in the customs and insurance sector to flourish. “Even things like bunkering charges keep changing, so how do you ensure that the [information] that you are providing to your customers is accurate? Documentation and insurance,” she says. “We see a lot of value-added services … with how to deal with uncertainty.”
Like in other industries, AI is becoming a driving force in transforming the maritime sector. From processing complex shipping documentation to enabling voice-driven interactions with customers, it offers disruptive efficiency gains. “AI is going to be an enabler that will boost efficiency and allow one to work on the things we’re really good at: determining which products to launch and generating new solutions, leaving out repetitive tasks,” the executive believes.
Although these same hopes were placed on blockchain before, in Mehta’s words, the industry struggled to automate documentation and authenticate shipping, with its help, due to the need to aggregate the market to actualise value. Given the wave of available AI solutions, and especially the LLM surge, knowing how to prompt large language models will be a must for anyone in the industry. When it comes to documentation, the ability to process vast amounts of documentation quickly and accurately can be handled by AI as well. As this tech gets implemented, it will be the experts who know how to curate and operate it that will be at the forefront of the industry’s future.
Sustainability continues to be a key pillar. With advanced tech, the executive says there’s still a need for high-efficiency emissions calculators that provide baseline insights, thus enabling optimization and reduction of carbon footprints. The industry is also investing in ship and fuel designs that would make the move to zero emissions possible for shipping. At the same time, startups are actively exploring autonomous trucking, Digital Twin solutions for terminals, and innovative cargo insurance models.
The company itself is interested in seeing new technological solutions spur. “[While] we prioritize internal development, we collaborate a lot with startups to bring technology to the company,” Nayantara says. Whenever the team decides to partner with an outside solution, it evaluates whether the startup is mature, whether there are other startups in the area, how mature the field itself is, and whether it would even make sense to outsource or is it a crucial question that needs to be done in-house.
Like in other industries, AI is becoming a driving force in transforming the maritime sector. From processing complex shipping documentation to enabling voice-driven interactions with customers, it offers disruptive efficiency gains. “AI is going to be an enabler that will boost efficiency and allow one to work on the things we’re really good at: determining which products to launch and generating new solutions, leaving out repetitive tasks,” the executive believes.
Although these same hopes were placed on blockchain before, in Mehta’s words, the industry struggled to automate documentation and authenticate shipping, with its help, due to the need to aggregate the market to actualise value. Given the wave of available AI solutions, and especially the LLM surge, knowing how to prompt large language models will be a must for anyone in the industry. When it comes to documentation, the ability to process vast amounts of documentation quickly and accurately can be handled by AI as well. As this tech gets implemented, it will be the experts who know how to curate and operate it that will be at the forefront of the industry’s future.
Sustainability continues to be a key pillar. With advanced tech, the executive says there’s still a need for high-efficiency emissions calculators that provide baseline insights, thus enabling optimization and reduction of carbon footprints. The industry is also investing in ship and fuel designs that would make the move to zero emissions possible for shipping. At the same time, startups are actively exploring autonomous trucking, Digital Twin solutions for terminals, and innovative cargo insurance models.
The company itself is interested in seeing new technological solutions spur. “[While] we prioritize internal development, we collaborate a lot with startups to bring technology to the company,” Nayantara says. Whenever the team decides to partner with an outside solution, it evaluates whether the startup is mature, whether there are other startups in the area, how mature the field itself is, and whether it would even make sense to outsource or is it a crucial question that needs to be done in-house.
Just because a tech is booming doesn’t mean it’s going to be the solution. Don’t jump straight to solutions – focus on why there’s a problem at first for sustainable innovations.
Cultivating innovation within an industry giant so big isn’t easy: innovation requires not only systems and processes but also a mindset shift. “Build your risk appetite, understand that failure is part of the process, and know that you need to fail fast and learn quickly,” Mehta advises. Questioning the status quo is also vital — true innovation begins from challenging the established norms. By adopting a disciplined, strategic approach to innovation, maritime organizations can navigate uncertainty, enhance operational resilience, and position themselves at the forefront of a rapidly changing global industry.
