With the increasing demand of products online, speedy fulfillment of orders is something which not just “Good to have” but it is the expectation of each consumer.

In order to ensure the faster and expedited delivery of the products and to capture most of the market base businesses have already got in to the race of developing new technologies and experimental supply chain models and few leading startups like Shadowfax offering last mile delivery solutions are coming at the forefront.

The major aim of these models is to increase shipment volume and focus on expedited delivery to ensure a happy and delightful consumer.

What is last mile delivery?

If we talk about last mile delivery in layman’s term it refers to the final delivery of the product to the end user or the consumer.

During the journey of a product from the shelf of a warehouse to the doorstep of a consumer, the “Last Mile” refers to the final step of the process. The point where the product finally reaches the buyer’s door.

It is also referred to as the major aspect of customer satisfaction because as early as the consumer receives the product more satisfied he/she is.

In addition to being customer satisfaction aspect, the last mile delivery is also considered to be the most expensive and time-consuming part of the shipping process.

Importance of last-mile delivery in B2B Logistics:

With the expectations been set by the e-commerce companies amongst the consumers. Majority of the B2B clients also like to enjoy the same purchasing facilities that is being granted to the B2C side.

B2B logistics movement plays a major role in the industry as these are the huge transactions and need to be completed effectively and efficiently.

Also the reverse logistics is one of the major trouble faced by the B2B companies due to huge cost involved. Therefore, importance of last mile delivery in B2B logistics cannot be ignored.

About Shadowfax

When it comes to last mile delivery solutions you always need a trusted partner to ensure that you are able to fulfill your promise and ensure customer satisfaction.

Now a days Shadowfax is emerging as the leading on demand logistic network offering tech enabled one stop shop delivery solutions be it Groceries, pharmaceuticals or E-commerce deliveries.

Shadowfax is enabling millions of micro-entrepreneurs and suppliers in logistics using a singular platform/IOTs to bridge the information gap and eliminate inefficiencies across the entire value chain of logistics.

Origin of Shadowfax:

Established back in 2015 with a seed funding of $300k, the company has grown itself in to leaps and bounds. The company since its inception started acquiring small businesses.

Shadowfax was the one that launched same day delivery for the e-commerce industry and also the same day heavy shipment intercity deliveries.

Shadowfax while operating profitably, kept on increasing its daily partners and further kept widening its span and secured its place in the Forbes India 30 under 30.

Currently operating in 500 cities, Shadowfax is fulfilling 400,000 orders each day. Last year i.e. 2019 it has also foray in to social commerce and kirana delivery model.

The Shadowfax Leadership:

Bengaluru based Shadowfax is the brainchild of few IIT Delhi Alumini, i.e.

1. Abhishek Bansal

Abhishek Bansal Co-Founder and CEO of Shadowfax completed his B.tech from IIT Delhi in Production and Industrial engineering. After that he served a company referred to as HAY group prior to the establishment of Shadowfax, India’s most trusted on-demand last mile logistics network.

 3. Vaibhav Khandelwal

Vaibhav Khandelwal Co-Founder and CTO of Shadowfax completed his B.tech from IIT Delhi in Electronics and telecommunication engineering. After that he served few companies like Adobe & System 2 Advisors, LP prior to the establishment of Shadowfax, India’s most trusted on-demand last mile logistics network.

3. Gaurav Jaithliya

Gaurav Jaithliya Co-Founder and Chief of strategy at Shadowfax completed his Masters in Technology, mathematics and computing from IIT Delhi. After that he served Gulf Talent as a senior software engineer in Dubai prior to the establishment of Shadowfax, India’s most trusted on-demand last mile logistics network.

4. Praharsh Chandra

Praharsh Chandra Co-Founder and CFO at Shadowfax completed his B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Delhi. After that he was associated with A.T Kearney prior to the establishment of Shadowfax, India’s most trusted on-demand last mile logistics network.

Apart from these major founders or we can say the Pillars of Shadowfax. It has a huge pool of talent in every department to ensure smooth functioning of the business. Be it human resource or finance, all the departments are well equipped with the brilliant minds.

Investors and Funding

Shadowfax was established back in 2015 with a seed funding of $300k from Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal and others.

Over the years Shadowfax has received a series of funds:

1. $8.5 Million– Series A Funding from Eight Roads Ventures in 2015.
2. $10 Million- Series B Funding from fidelity investments in 2016.
3. $22 Million- Series C Funding from NGP Capital, Qualcomm and Mirae Asset in 2018.
4. $60 Million- Series D Funding led by Flipkart in 2019.

Shadowfax Network and Orders year on year

1. 2015: The business launched itself with a presence in 5 cities with a delivery Capacity of 15000 orders per day.
2. 2016: The Business after launching Same Day Delivery for E-commerce made its presence available in 15 cities and delivering 30000 orders per day.
3. 2017: Shadowfax after the launch of its Next day Express intercity deliveries and same day heavy shipment intracity deliveries the company made its presence available in 75 cities and delivering 80000 orders per day.
4. 2018: With marking its entry into FMCG and consumer goods intracity distribution. Shadowfax almost doubled its presence in to 200 cities with delivery of 150000 orders per day.
5. 2019:  Shadowfax foray into Social Commerce and Kirana Delivery Model and made its existence available in 500 cities with delivering 400000 orders per day.

Milestones in Shadowfax Journey

1. 500+ Active cities which are currently serviceable.
2. 7000+ Pin codes for hassle free delivery.
3. 100k+ and growing partner network.
4. More than 1 Cr+ monthly transactions.
5. 3000+ commercial vehicles and still counting.
6. 35+ Air Routes.

Delivery Services Offered by Shadowfax

Shadowfax is on its fast track growth of becoming India’s biggest B2B one stop new-age logistics solution company.

Various Services that Shadowfax is currently offering:

1. Hyperlocal Delivery
2. Same Day Delivery
3. Next Day Delivery

1. Hyperlocal Delivery

Shadowfax is offering instant delivery of essential products like Food, Medicines and Grocery under this service. This instant delivery time can range between 30-90 minutes.

With the help of the Live tracking system it becomes easier for delivery partner through optimized routes to ensure hyperlocal deliveries are completed effectively and efficiently.

2. Same Day Delivery

With its huge span over the states and the country. Shadowfax is offering the fastest intracity delivery services in India.

Be it reverse logistics or Express Grocery delivery. The LCV Fleet offers fast and reliable same day delivery.

3. Next Day Delivery

To ensure minimum time is taken to deliver the products, Shadowfax offers its express intercity delivery service.

With a stronghold on technology and an impeccable air and surface connectivity, the forward logistics and Kirana delivery is ensured to reach the destination in the minimum time possible the very next day.

Categories of operation

Shadowfax has emerged as a leader in last-mile delivery and last mile logistics solutions and has further divided the categories of its delivery services.

Various categories of operations that Shadowfax operated under are:

1. Food Delivery
2. Pharmacy Delivery
3. Grocery Delivery
4. E-Commerce Deliveries
5. E-Commerce Reverse Logistics
6. Economy Express

1. Food Delivery

Curing the hunger, Shadowfax is serving the biggest players in the food industry and local restaurants to ensure that the last mile carrier service is completed hassle free at any hour.

2. Pharmacy Delivery

Shadowfax Ensures 90-minute delivery of the pharmacy products through its widely spread last mile delivery network. To effectively manage the criticality behind the delivery of the medicines.

3. Grocery Delivery

To ensure that the end consumer is able to get the quality service at the comfort of their home. Shadowfax is offering last mile delivery service for Grocery items within the stipulated time to eliminate the customer efforts and providing the services at their doorstep.

4. E-Commerce Deliveries

With the movement of people from offline to the online market, Shadowfax is all set to ensure the last mile delivery and help E-commerce giants fulfill their promise.

Services Offered under E-commerce

• Pickup from Marketplace or the Warehouse.
• Multimode Connectivity across PAN India.
• Calls Masked over the network to reduce the chances of fraud.
• Feature to track end to end shipment.
• Doorstep payment solution.

5. E-Commerce Return logistics

Return logistics can be a nightmare for any seller and the reason being the huge cost and time involved in the process.

However, Shadowfax with its tech based and cast network has made Return logistics a cost effective process.

6. Economy Express

To eliminate the consumer pain areas and to ensure seamless & super speed delivery of intercity goods. Shadowfax has emerged as the most cost effective, trusted and efficient partner.

Establishing Gold Standards in Reverse Logistics

Shadowfax reverse logistics has beaten its own expectations through a successful launch of e-Commerce logistics 2.0 which has taken the reverse logistics to a new height by identifying each and every pain area.

With the identification of these areas and using its tech based last mile delivery technique has developed a seamless reverse logistics network to ensure businesses are able to get back maximum shipments.

Solutions Shadowfax is offering

• Quality Check with 18000+ checkpoints at the doorstep.
• Auto allocation of pickups instantly along with live updates on successful quality check.
• Quality Check at the door step offers direct shipping to the merchants.
• No need to wait for 3-4 days for refunds, Shadowfax offers instant refunds.
• No manual paper work involved eliminating the dead weight of paper for the riders.
• Merchants can define the priority of the pickup.

Milind adds, “In the near future, we are working hard to predict scheduled pickups and be able to pick products up within 90 minutes of a customer’s request. Both our clients and their customers will love a doorstep KYC procedure and instant replacement for the products. We have received some requests for customized packaging as well.”

Shadowfax Seller Portal

Shadowfax offers an app based platform for the merchants to ensure that they are able to track the delivery of their orders on the go.

Along with that Shadowfax Seller Portal 2.0 version of the e-commerce logistics offered by Shadowfax enables the merchants to set the priority of the orders or the return logistics.

Not only that the transparency in the Shadowfax Seller portal dashboard helps make the entire process hassle free for merchants and Shadowfax both.

Shadowfax Order Tracking

Shadowfax offers a great order tracking system with live tracking that makes Shadowfax order tracking system user friendly and ensures complete customer satisfaction.

In Shadowfax Order Tracking system you just need to enter the tracking id and you are all set to get the latest updates regarding your order.

Also the inbuilt notification system in Shadowfax Order tracking platform makes you aware about all the latest updates.

Other Last Mile delivery startups

1. BLACKBUCK: Blackbuck is an Indian last mile delivery startup for online logistics transaction to provide one stop solution to the users, Delivering anything anywhere.
2. BookMyPacket: BookMyPacket is a technology based logistic operator providing express service, which is effective, efficient and easy on pocket. It is one of the top rated Last mile delivery startup.
3. Ecom Express: Ecom Express one of the last mile delivery startup has seen rapid growth by proving end to end last mile logistics solution to the Indian E-Commerce industry.
4. CityXfer: One of the leading Indian last mile delivery startup offering intracity logistic service for volumetric products with the help of innovative technology.
5. Grofers: Grofers has established itself as one of the leader in the last mile delivery startup by enabling the end user to order the product from different categories using its mobile app and online platform.

Last mile delivery is increasingly getting popularity in India as a new wave of startups are coming on the forefront with innovative ideas and technologies to address the inefficiencies in the sector.

And with the ongoing automation across the industries, it’s expected that we may witness delivery robots, drones, and self-driven vehicles attempting these last mile deliveries in near future.

The post All you need to know about Shadowfax – A Last Mile Delivery Network appeared first on Growthonomy.

COVID-19 and Wuhan – The Commercial Capital

In order to prevent and control the spread of Novel Coved-19, Chinese Government imposed a full lockdown on Jan 23, 2020 in the city of Wuhan. All major roads and highways were blocked as a reason of the same and approximately 11 million citizens were placed in quarantine that lasted for an unexpected duration of 60 days.

Various severe challenges were imposed because of this lockdown. As Wuhan is considered as the circulatory system of the entire retail sector. Be it groceries or everyday supplies. And the lockdown acted as a barrier wherein the people were cut off from the communities and were locked up in their homes/apartments.

Soon after the declaration of the lockdown the first situation that came up was panic buying from the local stores. In order to prevent themselves from the risk of contamination arising out of contamination.

During this situation two biggest retail giants of china accepted the challenge to keep the quarantined residents supplied with all the necessary items during the isolation days. High degree of innovation and flexibility was seen in terms of skills, processes along with range of products and services offered.

Technology Transformation By Alibaba

With the help of its digital logistics platform, Alibaba became the first one to take a huge move in this direction. With rapid fast market understanding Alibaba identified and contacted all the major quality manufacturing partners, which reopened the mask and other medical supply units during the time of Chinese New Year.

Alibaba offered fast track shipping and tracking of all the critical supplies such as face masks, hand sanitizers and other essential supplies at best prices through its B2C and C2C marketplace.

Alibaba Didn’t stop here, with the help of its digital payment system named Alipay, they were able to collect a huge donation amounting to $1 million alone in the very first 8 hours.

When it comes to physical delivery and distribution, Alibaba’s Cainiao Network and its competitor JD.com are already in process of experimenting new automated technologies in a bid achieving an edge over Western rivals Amazon and Alphabet. 

Innovative Solution By JD.com Played An Important Role In Fighting COVID-19

If we talk about the examples, in 2018, JD.com had tested delivery in remote areas through drones, driverless smart vehicles etc.

After the lockdown was imposed, the first challenge that was faced by digital retailers was: Increasing the delivery capacity without moving manpower into the province?

Coming up with a solution JD.com and few other retailers deployed their new automated technology. Smart vehicles with loaded maps were remotely operated to deliver donated goods to hospitals and household communities.

The empty streets contributed to this experiment. Along with empowering the retailers to cope up with demand hikes without violating the Government laid policies and guidelines.

Major Challenge Faced By The eCommerce Giants:

As major roads and highways were blocked, it was a challenging task to deliver goods and essential items to remote areas affected by virus. Delivery to some remote areas that were still connected by small roads and ferries were consuming time up to 6 hours.

Here JD’s team came up with a creative and innovative idea of delivery using drones, which completed the task effectively in just 20 minutes.

Lockdown resulted in a huge demand of daily essential such as rice, flour, fruits, vegetables and other items. As a result of the same there was a huge transformation from offline to online stores. Which led to shortage of human resources to monitor these supply chains.

Smart Move by Freshippo (Grocery Subsidiary of Alibaba) & 7Fresh (branch of JD.com)

Grocery subsidiary of Alibaba named Freshippo, confronted the challenge by asking workers from shuttered restaurants and retail outlets to staff the supply chain and hiring them

JD.com’s 7Fresh branch quickly followed the suit. And in a short span of time were able to leverage these workers and had to provide them with least knowledge and skills in terms of e-commerce context.

Further leveraging the opportunity, 7Fresh significantly increased the production of ready to cook items with the help of the temporary catering staff that they have hired.

Similarly, MTDP, a super-app restaurant delivery platform came forward to offer its services for the delivery of everyday supplies by partnering with over more than 7,000 brick-and-mortar supermarkets to process digital orders and deliver to individual households.

Contact Less Deliveries:

Delivery workers are most prone to this situation as they are the one who will interact and get in touch with the consumer base. Putting their health at stake and may act as a vector in transmitting the virus.

In order to further reduce and minimize the risks, JD.com and Alibaba both took all the necessary steps like equipping their employees with facial masks, gloves and disinfectants.

Not only that further safety processes were incorporated in their routine, such as temperature checks, mandate disinfection after each delivery and final drop off.

The last mile delivery, which required customer signatures before drop off also proved to be major area of concern for the e-commerce giants as customers refused to accept the orders because of interaction with the delivery personnel and gated communities also refused the entry.

In order to overcome this situation, JD.com placed delivery boxes outside the gated communities and after placing the order in the box a QR code is sent to consumer informing the delivery of the item and requesting the receipt.

Other Initiatives By Alibaba To Fight COVID-19

AliHealth also got pace during this time, providing Covid-19 information through Taobao and Alipay. As the situation started getting worse, it started offering free online consultation on their platform.

As the businesses and Government of the entire world came on to the foot front to defeat the Covid-19 situation, the rapid success of Chinese e-commerce giants and their strategy is teaching the entire world, how to be tech savvy and access mass markets.

The post How Innovation Helped Alibaba Soar High Even During 60-day COVID-19 Lockdown appeared first on Growthonomy.

What’s the news?

As the race continues, the news broke regarding the construction of 1 million square feet huge warehouse just adjacent to the international airport of Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW International Airport).

What’s in it for the traders?

With the construction of the warehouse just adjacent to the international airport. There will be a huge convenience for the transporters and shippers. The reason being the accessibility to all the major state and interstate highways and vast storage capacity.

About the Project owner.

Dallas Based, Perot Development Co. is the one taking care of the project. The company majorly focuses on Air/Cargo, Warehouse/distribution and logistics. In past 7 years, Perot has leased almost 5 million sq. feet of logistic space, including the 2 massive fulfillment centers of Amazon.

What’s the current status?

The first phase of Dallas-Fort Worth or we can say DFW International Airport project is expected to be completed in 12 months. Soon after the completion, the project will be able to cater to three fulfillment centers. If we talk about the largest storage space in the project it will be approximately 646,190 sq. feet with 171 trailer positions and 136 dock doors. 

From the CEO’s mouth:

CEO of the company Pat Perot stated that they are targeting E-commerce companies. The major reason behind the same is that we are located in the middle of the metroplex and will be able to offer great proximity to the huge population base along with the labor. Along with that the last mile deliveries and you can get the cargo coming in easily be it through the airport or by the truck.

It is being built on a speculative basis due to strong market interest in infill sites centrally located in major metropolitan areas with significant international trade volume, he said.

The site of the warehouse directly fronts the President George Bush Turnpike, along with the access to two huge exits. Other major advantage we will be able to offer is easy reachability to FedEx and UPS regional hubs and centers, the United States Postal Service bulk mail centers, and all the major freight forwarders, not only that Foreign Trade Zone benefits and local tax exemptions.

In Phase 2 of the project, the major emphasis will be laid to feature smaller lease of around 50,000 sq. feet or more that will be built to suit any kind of logistic purposes.

E-commerce industry is the one which is reshaping the demand for industrial properties and how warehouses are rapidly built. Currently E-Commerce accounts for almost 10% of the total retail sales and is growing at a rapid pace i.e. three times faster than the traditional store sales for the past few decades.

As per a study conducted by Real Estate Services and investment firm CBRE (Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis) in 2018, It was found that more than 30% of the distribution space is attributed to E-commerce on lease. And for every $1 billion e-commerce sales growth, approximately 1.25 million sq. feet of warehouse space is required. And it is because of this demand for effective and efficient logistic space that supports quicker and faster deliveries, new warehouse designs have been introduced which are wider and larger. If we look at the dimension’s new warehouse in the United States have increased by 108,665 sq. feet, or we can say 143%, in size and 3.7 ft. in terms of height in comparison to high-development period previous 20 years, according to CBRE report.

So it becomes quiet clear that the growth of E-commerce platform is in a tremendous state and will require a lot of storage space as the consumer base is shifting at a great speed from traditional market to E-commerce platforms.

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