A short story on bridging the last mile of deliveries in India
We earlier wrote how the last mile of logistics in India is broken and how businesses suffer from last mile blindness. We took some practical steps in the last few months to mend it.
The challenges are unique in India. As are the customers who seek fast deliveries, as well as the delivery partners who fulfill them in our cities.
For us at Shadowfax, the holy grail is to connect this two-sided marketplace using technology.
On the demand side,
Our mission is to help businesses offer an instant and seamless delivery experience to their customers. We launched a new plug-and-play platform a few weeks back and the response is nothing short of amazing.
We are also building specific solutions for clients in any given vertical. For instance, we noticed e-commerce businesses are frustrated with the returns. With 80% same-day returns across a network of 100 cities, we are glad to say that we have established the gold standard in reverse logistics.
We understand that our platform cannot stand alone and there are other service providers who can help improve the delivery experience even further. Our partnership with Urbanclap was an effort in this direction. We did that to help e-commerce clients install electronic appliances, or assemble furniture at customers’ homes.
On the supply side,
We see value in cultivating a network of micro-entrepreneurs who can deliver goods. We are working hard to bring together 1,000,000 such micro-entrepreneurs.
Shadowfax’s platform is designed to empower these working-class heroes. Every partner can choose where they want to work, what kind of products they want to deliver and how much time in a given day or week they want to work.
Results from our WINGS program suggest that local delivery companies are glad to join the platform too. They most appreciate the access to Shadowfax’s 2000+ clients across food, grocery, e-commerce, and pharma verticals. We look forward to signing up many more local delivery companies as we grow our operations to 100 cities.
In case you’re wondering, it doesn’t matter if you already have a delivery business or not. We wrote a detailed guide on starting a local delivery business. You can use that to get started and join us for the ride.
Traveling in unexplored territories and this complex terrain of last mile or hyperlocal logistics is exciting. The fun is alone that makes it worth to continue building Shadowfax. Then, it’s a cherry on the top when an international media company calls your work the best on-demand platform for instant deliveries in India.
We’ll like to invite you for the ride.
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