GS1 India: A Standards Organisation

India is a consumer driven economy with consumers dictating demands for accurate, complete & authentic product information and easy accessibility of product across channels. Brands are competing with each other to provide this and enable consumers make informed purchase decisions. This information, if standardised and consistent across channels, also leads to seamless omni-channel consumer experience. However, the challenge lies in capturing product attribute information in a standardised, consistent and complete manner. Information captured through digital means is not what e-tailing websites are looking at. Correctly captured product information is something that compels consumers to buy it while depicting an honest and accurate picture about that product. Everything, right from product images to product dimensions and capturing of product attributes should follow the prescribed standards. Here, it is interesting to know that the GS1’s standards for imaging, dimensioning and ...

In India, healthcare is largely inaccessible in the country and has humongous cost attached to it. Even after various health insurance companies in the fray to secure health, one ends up paying large sums of money because of high premiums. This is a result of inflated treatment costs in the medical bills and fake bills presented by patients, many times by tweaking the hospital names. On the other hand, insurance companies had no way to cross check the physical presence of hospitals in the absence of a national registry of hospitals. But not anymore. ROHINI —  Registry of Hospitals in Network of Insurance (ROHINI), is an online national hospital repository based on Global Location Number(GLN), launched by the Indian Insurance Bureau (IIB), under IRDAI, with the aim to ensure faster claim settlement and establish a check on insurance claims by bringing in visibility to hospital identity. Under ROHINI, all private hospitals and day-care centres are identified with a 13-digit g...

When a consumer walks into a retail outlet or search online to purchase a product, s(he) ignores the most important aspect of the product — its barcode number, which is printed on product labels. These labels also comprise of some details pertaining to the product — like manufacturing date, expiry date (if it’s a consumable), batch number along with the retail product price. Barcode numbers starting with prefix ‘890’ consists of a GS1 Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) which is a global standard widely used in the retail sector. The barcode number is linked to an external tool which holds additional information about the product that the label presents. Simply put, these barcodes link back all the information about the product all through the chain — when it was manufactured, the batch it was manufactured in, the date, the time, its packaging details, etc. In India, the platform which acts as a national repository to accurate & authentic product information is called DataKart...

GS1 is a global standards organisation that develops and maintains standards to improve efficiency, safety and visibility of supply chains across the globe. GS1 standards enable businesses to uniquely identify, accurately capture and seamlessly share information on products, logistics units, locations, entities, documents and services across supply and demand chains. Most commonly, these standards are used in  assigning barcode numbers  to consumer items. They also enable several applications, such as product authentication, POS checkout, online selling, stock availability, track & trace, product recall, real-time stocks monitoring, and more. GS1 standards are open, neutral and technology agnostic, enabling companies of all sizes and complexities to use — send and receive data in the supply chain, and hence, gain visibility and exchange information. By the use of global  GS1 standards  across the supply chain, organisations can significantly cut down on adminis...

Today, the collection of reliable, up-to-date information on retail products is a challenge for retailers, online shopping websites and app providers. This is especially because there is no standard format/no fixed product attributes that are required by each retail sector player. This is despite the fact that this accurate and trusted product information is vital to managing daily retail operations like merchandise ordering, supplies receipts, planogramming, FIFO management, stock monitoring, new product introductions, promotions, etc. Need for detailed, updated information The information required to manage day-to-day retail operations includes detailed product attribute information, such as its net weight, gross weight, dimensions, price, action and deactivation dates, description, etc., along with product images. For small brand owners, a more streamlined approach to collecting and mentioning product information can help them list their products faster with multiple retailers/...

India's pharmaceutical industry today enjoys global eminence for producing the largest volume of generic drugs in the world, meeting over half of the global demand for vaccines and almost 25% demand of medicines for the United Kingdom. Indian drug companies are recognised globally for their operations across the world. Despite this critical role that Indian pharmaceutical industry is playing in global healthcare, it becomes a target of various counterfeit and  verification of pharmaceuticals    allegations from across the world, from time and again. As per a study done in 2014 by one of India’s trade bodies, around 25 per cent of India’s drugs are fake, counterfeit or substandard. According to a report released in April’19 by the office of the United States Trade Representative, 20% of pharma products in India are counterfeit. As per a report published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), “To Err is Human”, 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur annually due to medical errors, o...

The EPC (Electronic Product Code) is a unique number assigned to a specific product/item, which acts as a key to database to unlock information about that product.  These numbers are similar to a  Global Trade Item Number  (GTIN), which is encoded in barcodes, except for the fact that it is unique for each specific unit of a product.  EPC number is encoded in a microchip of a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. Radio waves are used to capture the unique ID at extremely high rates and at distances further than 10 meters, without line-of-sight contact.  RFIDs are leveraged to boost supply chain visibility and increase inventory accuracy. As per market research, integration of sensors and cloud-based technologies in RFID tags offer lucrative growth opportunities to market players across Industry segments, including supply chain management, airline baggage handling, industrial logistics, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, brand protection, libraries, me...