Assignment 1 – ESM – Prashant Gupta – 2018PGP267

Fable – Delhivery – A visionary and a successful start-up

This is one of the most successful start-ups I have heard of, and have personally experienced their
services as well. Originally conceptualized as a hyperlocal delivery platform for food and medicines,
Delhivery pivoted to servicing the online retail market after gauging the size and potential of the
industry.

They identified logistics as a common but crucial challenge faced by every online retailer and given
the owners` backgrounds in engineering and technology, they felt that they would be able to build a
unique value proposition out of it.

At the time when it was founded, no one thought that last mile delivery and COD orders will become
the two biggest challenge and cost zones in the e-commerce space. After months of planning and
optimisation, they launched their express logistics services in June 2011 and delivered over 500
shipments per day for five e-commerce clients in Delhi-NCR. They also opened fulfilment services in
Delhi and Chennai less than a year later, processed up to 50,000 shipments a month and delivered
up to 9,000 shipments a day in the same period. They kept on expanding and today they fulfil over
10 million orders a month with 99% fidelity and fulfilment timelines between 30 minutes and 72
hours. They are also present in over 950 cities and in more than 11,000 pin codes with fulfilment
space spread across 5,00,000 sq. ft. and supporting over 1,00,000 sellers and more than 3,000
ecommerce companies.

Now they are working to make their model more advanced using cutting-edge technologies. With
respect to addresses, they are working on a routing proprietary software that picks up the correct
address in case someone has given a wrong pin code or character. This software - named "ADFIX" -
does not depend on just a single character, but checks the whole address. This will be and advanced
one of a kind solution to this problem of wrong pin codes and addresses and bring a revolutionary
change to the delivery mechanism in our country.

It has also tied up with local departmental stores, chemists, beauty parlours and women’s boutiques
to offer a delivery-cum-pickup service on a revenue-share basis. The company drops bulk packages
at these outlets. Customers can then fix a time for the delivery of the products when they are back
home from work, or collect the item from the outlet anytime. I also used this service once when I
was in Delhi and I found it really fascinating and convenient.
 X Factor – “The Something Store” – A Bogus Idea
It`s a US based start-up which is suffering now-a-days. A little more than eight years ago, the
founders of The Something Store had an idea. If anything could be sold on the Internet, why not sell
"something?" Most people laughed at the silliness of this idea and tossed it aside. But not the
founders. Instead, they went ahead with the concept and launched an e-commerce website. The
concept is bizarre, but somehow it worked in the beginning when it started.

The concept is - Customers place an order and pay $10. In return, they receive something. The catch
is they have no idea what they'll receive until they get it. This company simply guarantees that it will
be brand new product, worth at least $10, shipped for free and legal to sell in the United States. It
could be a kitchen gadget, an original piece of art, a clock or any other number of items.

I think it`s not a good and successful business idea which can sustain in the long term with profitable
margins. As more and more people shop once and come to know that the product is not of good
quality and the company is making false promises, it will fall and has already started falling.

In the Americas, when people go online and surf for products, they have a strong intent of purchase,
unlike Chinese or Indians who shop meanwhile amidst using the internet for different purposes.
Nobody would ever want to pay for something that they don’t know about. Even a logical person can
comprehend easily that a company cannot operate without being profitable in the long term. And if
we look at the business proposition of this company, it`s simply bogus and unclear. How can a
company deliver a brand new product worth at least $10 incorporating all types of end-to-end
packaging and delivery costs if a customer is paying just $10? This becomes a questionable
proposition which can easily be categorized as a fraudulent business by the customers.