It’s your birthday in a week. You order the get dressed, you so coveted, from your favored on line save-it is able to be Myntra, Flipkart, or Jabong and excitedly wait, counting the days and hours in your workplace for it to be brought. Your ecommerce provider has stored you well notified that it'll be delivered well before your D-day at your property and you could without difficulty music its path of progress toward you. But as good fortune would have it, proper in the intervening time the shipping boy comes to deliver your parcel of happiness; you have to step out for an errand, thus resulting in useless transport hassles. Not only have they marred your purchasing revel in however also added to the shipping costs for the ecommerce enterprise.
But what if there was an alternative wherein the shipping boy ought to actually drop your parcel at a cozy locker proper near your condo, and you may select it up for your personal sweet time? After intimation The locker device will eliminate last mile transport hassles for the employer, will make sure you may select up your parcel at your convenience, and even reduce down on carbon footprints. Now that might make for one hell of a glad birthday for all concerned! This is what precisely QikPod – a simple, handy & cozy cloud-enabled, IoT product and carrier announced these days via serial entrepreneur and one of the maximum famous faces of the Indian startup surroundings Ravi Gururaj, ambitions to acquire.
The biggest pain-factor for ecommerce buyers is that someone needs to be on the deal with of delivery when the courier promises the package. This disrupts customers’ personal and paintings schedules and additionally outcomes in re-transport tries and prices for the courier organizations. QikPod lockers addresses this problem. In addition to supplying consumer comfort, QikPod will also offer expanded security & safety within the courier/delivery system and tremendous price savings ordinary. The discount in delivery communications, failed delivery tries and consolidation of deliveries and routes could have a sturdy, tremendous discount in carbon footprint of courier groups as properly.
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Says Ravi about the muse to release his sixth challenge, “I had always deliberate to jump back into constructing a project, but took a while to identify a tangible, valuable and huge growing problem area in which I may want to build an innovative business enterprise.”
No surprise, with the burgeoning on line retail market in India slated to touch $one hundred Bn mark by means of 2020, the but to be launched revolutionary project has already secured the backing of industry heavyweights inclusive of Foxconn, Silicon Valley assignment fund Accel Partners, Flipkart and Delhivery within the shape of a $nine Mn investment spherical.
How It Works
In order to efficiently smoothen out the remaining mile transport system, QikPod will set up a network of sensible lockers for handing over ecommerce parcels to online buyers throughout the metros. The lockers will integrate technology such as internet of things with a logistics device on the again stop. Initially Foxconn will offer these lockers, which later will be built by using extra partners.
Through QikPod lockers, clients may have the choice of having deliveries made to their handy location, thereby mitigating the hassles of payments, returns, coordinating timings with shipping boys and cut price for e-tailers. The cloud-enabled, IoT product and carrier would on one hand allow the flexibility to the purchaser to pick up his parcel from a comfy location at a desired time at the same time as however it'll provide a greater convenient alternative to home delivery.
Providing information about the era, Ravi stated,
We will build a simplified interface which may be used by any customer or any courier boy despite the fact that if he doesn’t have a telephone. It would be a no brainer to operate the locker, the usage of a simple code on sms. The lockers might be low-value but strong, easy to install, bendy in length, built for neighborhood Indian conditions, for neighborhood audience, and at local prices. Besides lowering carbon emissions, any other characteristic of the generation is that the use of a locker doesn’t require a client to share his cope with or telephone wide variety with shipping guys. Thus client safety turns into another delivered gain.
For ecommerce agencies inclusive of Flipkart, that's the number one investor, and grants over eight Mn programs every month, QikPod will assist keep away from prices of re-handing over when customers are not physically gift. Similarly, Delhivery, that is an investor in QikPod along Flipkart, believes the enterprise can push up to ten% of its shipment shipping thru this parcel community. By slicing out the pain in closing mile transport each for the customer and the ecommerce provider, it will enable authentic economies of scale for ecommerce and logistics vendors within the united states of america.
Adds Gururaj, “I trust over time parcel locker networks will help take care of almost a 3rd to 1/2 of the parcels shipped throughout India’s metros. Our plan is to construct the sector’s largest parcel locker network with over 50,000 lockers throughout all important metro cities in India. I hope you may see a QikPod deployed in every apartment constructing, office park, many famous stores and public transit locations in the now not too remote destiny. Our purpose is to construct a scaleable commercial enterprise.”
Target Market
QikPod’s major customers would include ecommerce players, logistics providers, courier corporations, and offline stores. Initially starting from Bangalore, a network of absolutely automated, self-serve lockers might be installed in residential complexes, office compounds, cafes and kirana stores across the country, with many famous shops and public transit locations to comply with.
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Gururaj stated, “It might be an open platform for every etailer. From Paytm to Shopclues to GoJavas to postal offerings, all are welcome to apply it as long as they're authorized to accomplish that.”
Talks are already in method for the first few places, which presently is Ravi’s predominant attention. Once these are finalized, the primary few lockers will start appearing in Bangalore inside the following couple of weeks, and pretty a few slated to be rolled out in the subsequent region. QikPod will initially test the era with the first few lockers, refine them, after which scale them up thru the u . S . A .. Starting with Bangalore, the lockers might be established within the metros, followed by tier-2 cities. Big records analytics to assess the use of lockers might be hired on the way to determine their vicinity inside the destiny.
Monetization, Funding, And Traction
QikPod plans to move aggressively and deploy 50,000 lockers throughout the usa which can be set up in various sizes, starting from a low-footprint 10-compartment column to loads of cubicles across a massive parcel locker room. The service could be currently made to be had freed from price for clients, in addition to for locations and sites that desire to install and host a locker for the initial few months. The enterprise version is a B2B model, wherein ecommerce players pays for a per locker use.
Later, as the machine scales up and consumers gravitate closer to it, there would be scope for monetizing value brought offerings to patron on the likes of loyalty golf equipment.
As referred to in advance, the yet to be launched startup has already garnered the backing of huge names in ecommerce, logistics, and mission capital area. Accel Partners, Flipkart, Delhivery and Foxconn Mobile, have dedicated to make investments $9 Mn (INR 60 Cr) in its first round of funding. Most of this funding will pass towards building the era, the infrastructure, and the lockers.
Competitive Landscape
Worldwide, the idea of an electronic locker facilitating last-mile transport of parcels has been implemented via pretty some agencies. Amazon itself operates Amazon Lockers within the US and UK which permit clients look for a locker vicinity near them and upload it to their address e-book so that each time they upload an object to their shopping cart, they could choose the locker location to ship their items to it. Once the bundle is introduced to the Amazon Locker, the consumer receives an electronic mail or textual content message with commands and a unique pick out-up code. The customer needs to go into the pickup code on the locker and the locker slot together with his package will then open. The package deal stays to be had for pick-up for three business days after the patron gets the pickup code.
The video beneath illustrates how Amazon lockers work:
Companies which include Package Concierge in US that offer digital locker solutions for apartments and student housings and VLocker in Australia, which designs, manufactures, installs and offerings locker structures, have popularised the usage of virtual lockers.
In India, Amazon has indigenously attempted to apply the locker idea through the Amazon Pickup programme that shall we consumers collect their parcels from decided on locations. The program now allows any available bodily rentable area (a shop, office, storage, residence or even a van) as a factor of alternate for Amazon programs for customers to choose up and return merchandise as consistent with their convenience.
The organization had piloted Amazon Pickup at Bharat Petroleum’s In & Out stores in Delhi and Mumbai remaining year. This has now grown from 20 pickup centres in Bangalore to 800+ points throughout 45 towns which also consist of Thoothukudi, Thanjavur, Vijayawada, Belgaum, Kolhapur, Rajkot and Ludhiana. Further, it plans to extend this deal to make all of the In & Out retailers throughout the country its pickup factors. In April, 35 In & Out stores had already been on-boarded to act as pickup points.
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Then there's the Mailbox program released by way of hyperlocal transport player Roadrunnr in October this 12 months to assist cater to the hassle of missed deliveries for its ecommerce customers.
Editor’s Note
Given the anticipated surge inside the ecommerce enterprise in India in the coming years, the want of the hour is a strong shipping and logistics backend. There is a dire want for a extra convenient transport alternative to home delivery to maintain the high growth in ecommerce and hyperlocal classes. A connected locker is a simple and powerful way to this problem. If QikPod is able to set up an effective locker machine community speedy in the u . S . Because it intends to, it might move a protracted manner in reducing the pain points in last mile deliveries and in addition enhancing the purchaser enjoy with ecommerce. Its achievement will depend on the robustness of the era, the safety and excellent of the lockers and the performance with which the community is developed. With Ravi’s full-size experience inside the internet technology domain, QikPod’s bold assignment to emerge as one among the biggest parcel locker networks, may be an interesting one to tune.
