I’ve religiously started reading stories on The Ken, Finshots, and stories on a few other websites to stay updated with the happenings of the world. It has been very rewarding indeed, I’ve gained a lot of insights, and I am slowly understanding the dynamics of the industry.
This article on The Ken was about Hyperlocal delivery. Through this blog, I will share my understanding and a possible hypothesis.
Hyperlocal delivery refers to the process of delivering goods directly from a seller to the customer. Goods include a variety of items ranging from groceries, food, clothes to medicines, and whatnot. The catch here is that there are companies that provide logistic services only, i.e to deliver goods to the customer. Shadowfax was one such company being spoken about in the article. It is ironic because sellers like Flipkart, Amazon etc leverage the services of third-party logistic providers but on the other hand, are trying to develop an in-house logistic mechanism that can be more optimized and flexible for them. In fact, Shadowfax was funded by Flipkart last year.
The way I see it, these third part logistic services need to offer something more than delivery of goods, that could probably be in the form of :
Offering transport services using electric vehicles saves the environment from carbon emissions, this can be a great USP
Develop algorithms to optimise the delivery routes, this is all the more relevant considering rising fuel prices
The next is a little student-oriented, but creating openings for students like me to deliver goods, for a month or two could probably also be beneficial, widening their scope of reach