ThinkStock PhotosThe entrepreneurial culture at Flipkart inspired Vivek Pandey to start his own business. He was particularly impressed by the last mile delivery network built by his former employer. “I wanted to extend the same reach and delivery capabilities to offline stores to enable quick and economical last mile delivery,” says 38-year-old Pandey. In January 2016, along with Bharat Khandelwal, he founded NOW Delivery, an on-demand delivery platform providing last mile logistic services to offline retail players. “We started out as a hybrid platform for bike taxis and last mile delivery, however, we soon pivoted to just last mile delivery services,” says Pandey, Cofounder and CEO.
The startup operates as a marketplace and has 200-plus retailers including food and beverage companies and pharma chains on its platform. Prominent clients include Pizza Hut, KFC, Burger King, Subway, Fortis and Apollo Pharmacies. Retail clients push orders to NOW Delivery and the orders are then executed by delivery partners, who are paid on per order basis. The Noida-based startup has more than 1,500 delivery partners on its platform and operates in NCR and Bengaluru.
The initial challenge for NOW Delivery was to train its delivery partners on using its platform. “While in the cab-hailing space, app usage has been quite prevalent, it was a relatively novel concept in the delivery space—bikers using an app to access delivery opportunities,” says Pandey.
In addition to creating a comprehensive and easy-to-understand training module for delivery partners, the co-founders personally trained them on how to use their app to take orders. “We introduced our app in both English and Hindi to reduce language constraints and make it easy for our delivery partners to use it,” says 35-yearold Khandelwal, Co-founder and COO. The founders also trained merchants on how to push orders via the NOW Delivery platform.
The startup’s other challenge was to bring about a behavioural shift. People in the logistics sector, those with experience in the courier/ecommmerce space, were used to making scheduled deliveries, so picking up instant orders required a shift from the fixed, time-table based work culture. NOW Delivery has managed to help bring about this change: The platform now helps execute more than 5,000 deliveries per day for about 100 clients across outlets.
The founders, who invested Rs 25 lakh in building the product, and bringing delivery partners and merchants on the platform, have drawn investors’ interest. They raised seed funding of about Rs 3.5 crore in 2016 and another Rs 3.5 crore in the first half of 2017 from a clutch of investors.
The company, which closed 2017-18 with a revenue of Rs 3.5 crore, expects to increase its top line to Rs 18 crore in 2018-19. “We have all the top F&B and healthcare chains in India as partners, so we have a huge captive business from our existing clients. They have close to 1,500 outlets across India which implies a potential of over 50,000 orders a day,” says Pandey.
The startup is currently focusing on greater penetration in NCR and Bengaluru—scaling to 25-30,000 orders a day—and aims to start operations in other metros in the next 12-15 months. “Business expansion would also include launching new delivery categories such as milk, fresh fruits, and diagnostics, among others. This will increase the utilisation of our delivery partners,” says Khandelwal.
The startup operates as a marketplace and has 200-plus retailers including food and beverage companies and pharma chains on its platform. Prominent clients include Pizza Hut, KFC, Burger King, Subway, Fortis and Apollo Pharmacies. Retail clients push orders to NOW Delivery and the orders are then executed by delivery partners, who are paid on per order basis. The Noida-based startup has more than 1,500 delivery partners on its platform and operates in NCR and Bengaluru.
The initial challenge for NOW Delivery was to train its delivery partners on using its platform. “While in the cab-hailing space, app usage has been quite prevalent, it was a relatively novel concept in the delivery space—bikers using an app to access delivery opportunities,” says Pandey.
In addition to creating a comprehensive and easy-to-understand training module for delivery partners, the co-founders personally trained them on how to use their app to take orders. “We introduced our app in both English and Hindi to reduce language constraints and make it easy for our delivery partners to use it,” says 35-yearold Khandelwal, Co-founder and COO. The founders also trained merchants on how to push orders via the NOW Delivery platform.
The startup’s other challenge was to bring about a behavioural shift. People in the logistics sector, those with experience in the courier/ecommmerce space, were used to making scheduled deliveries, so picking up instant orders required a shift from the fixed, time-table based work culture. NOW Delivery has managed to help bring about this change: The platform now helps execute more than 5,000 deliveries per day for about 100 clients across outlets.
The founders, who invested Rs 25 lakh in building the product, and bringing delivery partners and merchants on the platform, have drawn investors’ interest. They raised seed funding of about Rs 3.5 crore in 2016 and another Rs 3.5 crore in the first half of 2017 from a clutch of investors.
The company, which closed 2017-18 with a revenue of Rs 3.5 crore, expects to increase its top line to Rs 18 crore in 2018-19. “We have all the top F&B and healthcare chains in India as partners, so we have a huge captive business from our existing clients. They have close to 1,500 outlets across India which implies a potential of over 50,000 orders a day,” says Pandey.
The startup is currently focusing on greater penetration in NCR and Bengaluru—scaling to 25-30,000 orders a day—and aims to start operations in other metros in the next 12-15 months. “Business expansion would also include launching new delivery categories such as milk, fresh fruits, and diagnostics, among others. This will increase the utilisation of our delivery partners,” says Khandelwal.
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