Simplify your local e-commerce with these emerging local Logistics Provider

eCommerce in India is picking up at a pace we have never expected. The growth of eCommerce start-ups has fueled the growth of few more start-ups who provide support services for e-commerce start-ups.

Logistics is one of such support services or you can say an inevitable and essential part which can lead to failure or success of any eCommerce. Since the internet adoption and penetration has increased up to Tier-II and Tier—III cities, the orders on e-commerce sites have started flowing from these towns.

Apart from this; COD, various promotional and referral offers, all this combined further aggravated online shopping for customers. With this, the “delivery of products” to the remotest town and cities is the challenge which comes in the picture here. And as it is rightly said, “Necessity is the mother of invention”, this gives rise to new breed of hyperlocal logistics provider for eCommerce business set-ups.

This hyperlocal logistics provider works best for small eCommerce businesses or new ventures that recently entered into this click and buy business.

Why these hyper local be a perfect match for small businesses?

• They are affordable like you hire cabs or rickshaws for your own movement for one place to another in your city.
• They are quick, local and easily manageable.
• These start-ups have adopted different models: while some are marketplaces and simply connect customers with service providers, other start-ups directly employ, train and offer electricians, plumbers and other service providers, so you have diversified options for your business.
• Product and Delivery team being in the same city reduces turnaround time by a great margin giving you happy customers.
• Being able to outsource the whole delivery chain, they help you in cutting down significant costs and focus on core things for your business.

We heard and read a lot about these hyper local logistics service provider and thought of sharing few of these on-the-go buddies to help you out in delivering right things at right time to your customers.

1. Shadowfax

Started by Abhishek Bansal and Vaibhav Khandelwal (IIT-D Alumni), Shadowfax has grown big in their business. They have also raised a good amount of money from VCs to take the business to the next level.

Currently, they are serving merchants in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru and delivering goods and services around these cities. With the recent funds received from few big sources, they are in the phase of expanding their reach and making their system more robust. Their current clientele includes restaurants, pharmacy, florists, and grocery stores.

The pricing structure of Shadowfax is very flexible without any fixed costs involved. They charge customers on per delivery basis and thus, easily affordable for merchants or small business owners.

2. Opinio

Opinio is founded by Mahesh Kumar and Lokesh Jangid, two engineering graduates with entrepreneurial skills.

A company is serving grocery stores, electrical goods stores, laundries and bakeries on per order basis in and areas near Bengaluru.

Opinio also have apps registered on Apple and Google play store to track the deliveries. They give merchants Opinio App from where they can book delivery boy (Which they called us pilot), he picks up the order and do the delivery.

They also have kept the pricing model pretty simple to enable customers to reduce costs on their delivery model. They have adopted per order/per km pricing model which doesn’t incur any additional or fixed costs per order.

3. Pickingo

This one year old start-up started by IIT and IIM graduates is simplifying local commerce for customers and merchants in six cities. Right now, this start-up is catering to Pune, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Jaipur, Bengaluru and New Delhi.

The pricing of Pickingo is also in par with other players of the industry like Shadowfax and Opinio. They have distinguished themselves with one point of accepting payment only for timely deliveries of goods or services.

They are also catering to reverse pick up segment for eCommerce portals and are charging eCommerce companies on basis of weight of shipment.

Pickingo received a strategic investment from online food ordering, and restaurants listing giant Zomato and is backed by several big VCs. Sources suggest Picking go raised around $1.3 million from Orios Venture Partners along with Angel investors.

The company is investing in technical areas and upgrading services for merchants and taking business to next level as soon as possible.

4. Grab

Grab started in 2013 and since then it is one of the players in hyperlocal logistics provider market. A latest article published on grab and its upcoming strategies stated that they have more than 600 clients. Their clientele is mixed of e-commerce stores, grocery, pharma, and electrical goods.

They have established variable pricing model with no signup fees for merchants. They are currently operating in 10 cities and planning to launch their operations in two more cities (Chennai and Hyderabad by end of this year).

5. Parcelled

This on-demand hyperlocal logistics provider gained momentum with their new model of C2C logistics provider and delivery model. They eliminated the franchisees who act as middle men.

They pick up the goods or services, pack them and submit it to company’s warehouse from where they choose suitable courier partner to get the things delivered. Meanwhile, they also take care of packing and saves customer time.

Started by ex-flipkarts, they have been experienced with the kind of problems customers face while ordering and receiving goods via e-commerce portals. With Parcelled, they are trying to solve the same. They are currently operating in Bengaluru, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedbad, Jaipur, Chennai, Mumbai, Indore, Chandigarh, Kolkata and Surat.

They are operating on Business based pricing rather than franchisee based pricing which falls light on customers’ pocket as they don’t have to bear extra charges.

MobiCommerce

MobiCommerce is a leading end-to-end eCommerce software solutions provider. Known for developing scalable and feature-rich Marketplaces, eCommerce websites, mobile apps, and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), MobiCommerce boasts of being more feature-rich and fast as compared to its competitors. It has a steady clientele from the GCC and Europe.