Logistics have always been a significant sector for any country including India, however the space had never seen such an ground-breaking transform before Delhivery appeared in the market. Proving themselves since 2011 as an extraordinary startup, this company is presently similar to a backbone of logistics industry.
HOW DID IT ALL START-
Delhivery is a well-known courier services, logistics, and supply chain solutions company that efficiently works with people and businesses. Currently, the company is the leading business in the logistic industry in the country that provides a full and guaranteed set of services such as last-mile delivery, third-party and transit warehousing, reverse logistics, payment collection, vendor-to-warehouse, and vendor-to-customer shipping, and more.
Founded in May 2011 by a bunch of engineers Bhavesh Manglani, Kapil Bharati, Mohit Tandon, Sahil Barua, and Suraj Saharan has its headquarters in Delhi. Delhivery brings unparalleled expense efficiency and pan-India reach to more than its 10,000 customers. Driven by its mission to consume less time and distance, Delhivery focuses to make the world a smaller place for its customers.
Powered by an effective and efficient business plan, the company is coming out as one of the leading startup in the supply chain and logistics industry, so much so that it can be referred to as one of such courier and logistics startups that has paved a new path for the delivery of products. Apart from this, Delhivery is putting its constant focus on their customers in order to serve them with quality products, thereby building confidence and trust for the brand.
It was around half-past eleven at night when the duo Suraj and Sahil ordered food from a nearby eatery in Gurgaon. When they had the delivery man standing in front of their door, they did a little conversation with the delivery person, who then shared the problem of unemployment that was about to break out, which made the founders rush down to the store and talk to the manager. Soon they were at the restaurant, talking to the owner, who further elaborated his plans of shutting down the business and moving his staff elsewhere.
Here’s where Sahil and Suraj decided to start their delivery business, Delhivery and they hired all of them. Sahil narrated the exact conversation between him and the owner of the restaurant – “It was 11.30 at night, I still remember, we took our bikes and went to meet the owner, Anuj Bajaj, who was surprisingly still there. He said he was shutting the restaurant down. He was really happy we had come because he wanted his staff to relocate somewhere. We said bring it on, we’ll hire everybody.”
GROWTH OF DELHIVERY-
Based in Gurgaon, Initially Delhivery was a small business with just 5 members in the team for all their work, starting from accounts to product service to delivery hookups. However, within a short span of time, the company hired more than 15,000 people across a range of departments including deliverymen, account keepers, and many others, some of whom were only hired for and taking care after customer satisfaction and managing deliveries along with providing extensive help and support with the customer issues.
In an interview, Sahil Barua quoted some wonderful lines for his employees “After every 20 minutes I get up and go talk to a team member. Thanks to this, I know everyone in our office by their first name. We have that kind of openness in the office where people can tell us what they think. That is what keeps us going”.
The country’s logistics industry, which is valued at $160 billion is likely to grow by an expected CAGR of 10% and reach $215 billion in the next two years with the implementation of GST. However, most of the industry was largely torn into unorganized players where the approach of Delhivery can be simply termed as a phenomenon that has completed transformed the logistic industry and the way it works. Here comes the biggest market reach of Delhivery where they have more than 1400 serviceable pin codes on their list and more than 19,990 sq ft of warehouse space in Delhi as well as in Bangalore.
Delivery has a lot of partners with whom it aims to increase the product reach and to cope up with those partners, the company even provides third-party warehousing and transit warehousing. Having various e-commerce brands such as Flipkart, Amazon, eBay, Snpdeal, Jabong, Healthkart, as its customers, Delhivery also manages its customer base that comprises many other businesses and individuals.
DELHIVERY REVENUE AND BUSINESS MODEL-
Currently, the company has become India’s leading supply chain services company. It is one of India’s largest B2B, B2C, as well as C2C Logistics Courier Service Provider. The company is well-known for its economical shipping rates that it charges for the services. Further, Delhivery has No Setup Fees or Subscription Charges. The services offered by the company can be divided into 3 departments- Warehousing, Transportation, and Commerce.
The company till date has a turnover of Rs 3500 crore in FY21, which was witnessed at Rs 2800 crore during FY2020, and is looking forward to reach INR 6000 – INR 7000 crore in the next two years. Further, the company has the capacity of processing more than 15 lakh parcel per day in across 17,500 pin codes in India across 2,300 towns and cities.
All these deliveries are possible mainly because of its network of having nearly 7,000 drivers and having over 5,000 trucks. The company is looking forward to build some of the country’s largest trucking terminals at Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Chennai.
DELHIVERY FUNDING AND INVESTORS-
The company has witnessed a total amount of $1.39 billion funding over 14 rounds. On September 24 2021, the last round of funding that was led by Addition which helped the company to raise $125 million funds. Delhivery even raised funds equal to $76.34 million in the funding round dated September 6 2021. The company entered the unicorn club in the year 2019 when it raise $413 million that was invested by SoftBank Vision Fund, Carlyle Group, as well as Fosun International at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
By Gitika Mandhana
