CASE STUDY ON MARKETING STRATEGIES OF DELHIVERY

COMPANY: UNICORN IN THE INDIAN COURIER SERVICE

SECTOR
Ayush Kumar Singh1

BBA 3rd Year

Dr. B. C. Roy Engineering College, Academy of Professional Courses, Durgapur

Mail id: ayushkrsingh198@gmail.com

Dr. Anita Nandi Barman2

Assistant Professor

Dr. B.C. Roy Engineering College, Academy of Professional Courses, Durgapur

Mail id: anita.barman@bcrec.ac.in

ABSTRACT:
The case study paper deals with the situation of the courier services market in India before
the rise of the Delhivery company and also highlights the growth of Delhivery company. The
study focuses on the market gap which exists in the courier service segment in India. The
courier service market now consists of Rs 60000 crores in India as of 2022, among these
Delhivery company accounts for 60 % percent of the total market capitalization. The study
focuses on bridging the gap which existed in the market in the form of customers. Delhivery
was founded in 2011, as a food delivery company and later caught hold of the opportunity
that unfolded in front of them as an e-commerce logistics company. The case provides a
detailed note on how Delhivery became a market leader and what strategies it followed. The
competition was intensifying in the e-commerce logistics industry and Delhivery was
inspecting how it should sustain its competitive advantage, and restrict its losses. The paper
shows how the company brings a noticeable change in the logistics space.

KEYWORDS: Courier service market, competition, e-commerce logistics industry,

competitive advantage, Delhivery company
INTRODUCTION:
This startup was founded in Delhi back in 2011. The city name is embedded in the
company’s name: Delhivery, a startup that came from humble beginnings and began in a
market dominated by massive companies but figured out a way to beat them in their own
game.
Sahil Barua was a student at IIM, Bangalore, and in 2008, he wanted to become an
entrepreneur that was his dream and his business idea was simple: he wanted to help the
startup scale by employing a thrasio-style model where he would finance these startups
operation and help them grow with his expertise. He was gearing up to launch his startup, in
the final month of this program, but then the economy took a turn, and raising funds from
investors, especially on an untested business idea, became next to impossible. So, Sahil put
his idea on hold and started working at Bain & Company instead. Bain & Company, was
already a significant name in the field of entrepreneurship. The most famous company
founded by Bain alumni of course is Zomato along with Kaaryah, FabFurnish, Momoe,
Online Prasad, Wishpicker, and Mockbank being founded by Bainies, In Bain & Company,
Sahil Barua, fortunately, met two of the people that he would co-found Delhivery with – and
remember, here too, that Sahil worked at Bain from 2008 to 2011, and Flipkart was founded
in October of 2007. Snapdeal would their lead in 2010 and so Sahil, Mohit, and Suraj were
seeing the birth of Indian e-commerce unfold right there in front of them, while they were
working at Bain. Before meeting Pankaj, Deepinder built something on his platform that was
similar to Zomato called Foodlet was way ahead of its time- using this platform you could
order food online and have it delivered to you – that didn't exist anywhere else in India back
in 2006, but logistically, it was a nightmare. Foodlet didn't have its fleet of delivery partners,
so food delivery was fulfilled by the restaurants themselves. And, many of them did have a
small team of in-house food delivery staff, but during peak hours, this system would often
break down. Food could take anywhere between 30 minutes to several hours to be
delivered, and that was if the driver got the address right. In 2006, smartphones didn't exist in
India, so GPS navigation through Google Maps or some proprietary in-house navigation tool
wasn't an option for any of these restaurants. It was a big problem, and so in 2011 after
their conversation with Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, Sahil Mohit, and Suraj
realized that they could be the ones to solve it. A hyperlocal, Delhi-based delivery service
geared towards restaurants. They have taken the help of a mutual friend Bhavesh Manglani
for building up the website, and after hearing about this idea of this start-up he resigned from
his job at Idea Cellular and joined Delhivery as its fourth co-founder. And, that's the team
that's still leading Delhivery to this day, all these years later. It was just the four of them back
then. One incident was about ordering a meal from a nearby restaurant, but when the food
finally arrived, they discovered that the restaurant was shutting down and all of the delivery
drivers were out of work. This was an opportunity that they couldn't afford to pass up, so they
immediately visited the restaurant and after speaking with the owner, decided to hire the
entire delivery staff. And that's how it all got started - a service for delivering food in
Gurugram in 30 minutes or less. So, Delhivery began its operations in May of 2011 - they
had four delivery drivers and two employees. It was admittedly a small team, but in their first
month, they were already getting a hundred orders per day. There was clearly latent demand
here, and they were on track to become Gurugram's go-to food delivery service, but then in
June, the following month, an online men's fashion platform called Urban Touch, reached out
to them asking them if they could deliver clothes too. And at first, the co-founders of
Delhivery were hesitant, because they were a food delivery service, not a clothing delivery
platform. But then, they realized that their delivery drivers were only busy during lunch and
dinner -- that’s when people ordered a lot of food. And, the rest of the day well they just
didn't have a lot of work to do. And so, the co-founders of Delhivery came together and
decided that, as a way of generating some extra revenue on the side, it would make sense to
handle deliveries outside of the food space in between peak food ordering hours. So, they
started tying up with E-commerce companies who wanted to get items to their customers
quickly. And this started their journey to becoming the unicorn that they are today.
LITERATURE REVIEW:
The study discusses relevant literature on the significance of the courier service market and
how growing competition was intensifying in the e-commerce logistics industry.
The expanding volume of two worldwide mega trends, specifically urbanization and
online business, are solid drivers for a consistently expanding demand for delivery services.
Urbanization signifies the pattern that an ever-increasing number of individuals move into
metropolitan regions overall and into "megacities," with 10 million occupants. Reports
predict that by 2050, 70% of the total population, roughly 6.3 billion individuals, will live in
significant urban communities as discussed by Bretzke (2013).
The research paper by Statista (2019) highlighted that web-based business is in a
consistent increment and the sky is the limit from there and more business products are
requested to be ordered online. In 2018, web-based business showed an overall development
pace of 23.3% (Statista 2018). Hence, more geographic focus and expansion on the web
orders per individual lead to a consistent expansion in package volumes which has to be
taken care of. In Germany, for example, it is estimated that by 2023, 4.4 billion shipments
should be dealt with each year contrasted with 1.69 billion out of 2000.
Yaman et al. (2012) discuss that rising package volumes are set off by expanding e-
commerce business activities. Most web-based retailers, in any case, have made straight away
or even same-day conveyances to one of their fundamental assistances guarantees
Poggi et al. (2014) point out that in addition, online conveyances fluctuate over the
week, with Mondays regularly having top responsibilities and particularly over the year, e.g.,
because of seasonal deals as discussed by Boysen et al. (2019c).
Subsequently, last-mile conveyances additionally face firmly shifting responsibilities,
so last-mile ideas are required that are effectively adaptable without prior warning. Then
again, the conveyance individual giving over a parcel is normally the main human
cooperation for online business clients. In this way, a solid, responsive, and proficient
conveyance experience impacts consumer loyalty both for online retailers and messenger
administrations as conversed by Li et al. (2006). With self-administration ideas in light of
bundle storage spaces or robotized conveyance choices given automated ethereal vehicles
(drones) or independent conveyance robots, this last human cooperation gets lost.

THE OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY:

 The particular case study tries to get the market information of the courier services
sector with special emphasis on the Delhivery company.
 The particular case study focuses on the strategies applied by Delhivery Company to
bridge the gap in the courier market segment.
  The study gave the solution to the clients in terms of getting the market leader
position in a short period.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:
The following section provides details about the research method which is applied, including
methods of data collection and data analysis, that we used in the particular case study on
Delhivery Company for the recent period.
Quantitative and qualitative approaches are the major classification of Research methods.
Quantitative methodologies were initially utilized on basic science subjects like research
center examinations, study techniques, and mathematical strategies. A subjective report is
utilized when the specialist needs to get a more profound figuring out of a particular point or
circumstance. Myers (1997) expressed that the subjective methodology was created in
sociologies to help the specialist in examinations including social and social peculiarities.
Sources remembered for the subjective methodology are interviews, polls, perceptions,
reports, and the analyst's impression and responses.
Case studies on organization procedures are utilized to concentrate on the business issues of a
firm methodically by recognizing either research-situated issues and dissecting them to make
new information or to get familiar with a superior approach to taking care of the issues
connected with such issues. As needs are, contextual investigations are considered a
subjective examination strategy in business as board research. Contextual investigations are
predominantly centered around studying and examining an association and its business to see
new data to give answers for guaranteed or recognized issues. Some of the time, the
contextual investigation might zero in on examining a solitary issue or many issues of an
association. These issues might connect with different parts of the association’s business and
its current circumstance. A case study in light of organization examination gives ideas or
suggestions to work on the exhibition of the association. Organization examination can be
considered the most integral asset to mastering new abilities required in recognizing,
understanding, and taking care of the issues to oversee and lead the associations.
Marketing research can very explain the specific product needs, product preferences, usage
patterns, and attitudes towards consumption in all sectors of the economy.

ANALYSIS:
Around then, there weren't many organizations that offered conveyance administrations
inside India - particularly not for online business orders. So Delhivery moved forward and
filled that specialty by offering an expedited shipment administration. At last, it turned into
the biggest dispatch organization in India with more than 20,000 representatives and north of
100 stockrooms across 25 urban communities from one side of the country to the other (also
numerous more modest towns as well!). An immense hole existed in the Indian messenger
market preceding Delhivery's ascent. The conventional dispatch administration conveyed
products very late and was constantly deferred in making installments to the internet business
stages. There was no constant following element for the merchandise.
Marketing Strategy:
Product strategy: Delhivery is a help-based organization and dissimilar to different
organizations, it brings no actual item to the table. benefits now dissimilar to actual
merchandise, administrations are immaterial they shouldn't be visible tasted, or contacted
they're indistinguishable so creation can't be isolated from utilization they're short-lived
meaning once utilized administrations can't be put away saved or returned, lastly, they're
heterogeneous which depicts the uniqueness of administrations meaning they can't be
efficiently manufactured. The Delhivery organization offers a large number of
administrations to buyers and clients, including express bundles, halfway load cargo, load
cargo, and cross-line and store network administrations.
Express packages: There are a few transportation choices accessible with Express bundles
network administrations north of 17000 pin codes in India. It can deal with transfers of as
much as 10 kilograms with same-day and following day capacities and 48-96-hour
conveyances for significant distance orders, handle weighty merchandise administration
including the warehousing and conveyance of weighty products, like enormous electrical
merchandise, white products, furniture, and athletic gear, upheld by our broad container India
organization and PTL administrations.

Partial truckload freight: Delhivery gives fractional load cargo administrations zeroed in on
the B2B express section at serious rates. administrations are intended to meet standards as
well as occasional necessities the nation over. Clients' cargo necessities are overhauled at
serious expenses - with its very own blend armada and organization of container India
proficient load accomplices.
Cross-border services: Cross-border offering gives house-to-house, port-to-port express
package administrations as well as air freight to and from India. tasks are controlled by a
worldwide delivery administration, "Starfleet", where we follow a "pearl necklace"
methodology, incorporating worldwide organizations and carriers on a similar stage, giving
single-window perceivability into express and cargo worldwide transportation to transporters.
They have laid out a proportional relationship with FedEx to extend the inclusion across key
worldwide business sectors. The capacities incorporate a coordinated organization of express
and cargo arrangements combined with beneficial arrangements of tech-empowered
following, an in-house administrative group for proactive leeway support, and a committed
client overhauling group.

Supply chain services: E2E inventory network arrangements join the strength of warehousing
and transportation activities, framework, organization, and innovation with profound
information science and business knowledge capacities. This empowers to give thorough and
coordinated multi-channel request satisfaction arrangements that work on the dependability,
speed, and cost-productivity of the clients' stockpile chains. Furthermore, they gained
Primaseller Inc. to empower D2C web-based business brands and omnichannel retailers to
incorporate their on-the-web and disconnected channels with our coordinated operations
organization. This permits us to give a solid request to-conveyance vow to purchasers.

Pricing strategy: For indigenous brands and global players entering the Indian market —
across electronics, clothing, beauty, stationery, arts, etc. — D2C has become an attractive
channel. However, that doesn’t mean it’s easy or inexpensive to execute. The logistics of
shipping, packaging, warehousing, returns management, etc., can be complex and expensive
with traditional courier service. Delhivery D2C simplifies that. In addition, Delhivery reduces
the D2C logistics cost with robust shipping infrastructure and state-of-the-art technology.
Delhivery improved its unit economy: For a growing D2C business, it is critical to keep the
cost of every unit low. Not only does it save costs overall, but it also has a significant impact
on margins and profitability. With cost-effective logistics, you can improve your unit
economics, even at scale. Delhivery competitive rates for our shipping and logistics services.
So, whether you’re offering free shipping or charging your customers for it, you can keep
your costs low.

Lower warehousing: A fully equipped, temperature-controlled warehouse with 24×7

monitoring can be expensive for an early-stage D2C company. Moreover, when a D2C
company has a centralized warehouse in one location, it would delay deliveries for customers
located far away from it. Delhivery solves these problems with our 80+ fulfillment centers. In
addition to competitively priced shared-services warehousing, you can also effortlessly store
your inventory across various locations closer to demand. For instance, a Delhi-based
company with significant demand in Bangalore and Chennai can have inventory in
Delhivery’s local warehouses for low-cost express delivery.

Place strategy: The company started in Gurugram in the year 2011 and now, they ended up
spending one entire year making mistakes, learning about and refining their process in
Gurugram. And, this made it easy for them to produce identical results across India. They
knew their business so well, it wasn't chance, it wasn't luck, it was a replicable standardized
formula for excellence. While competitors like Chhothu.in, Dialaservice, and IndiaOnTime,
expanded too quickly and had to shut down within two to three years of starting operations,
they just couldn't crack the scalability formula as Delhivery did and so, covering 88.3% of the
pin codes in India, they were looking to expand their operations to other cities once they had
mastered their operations in Gurugram.

Promotion strategy: Delhivery had its promotion plan clear from the very start, they were
transparent about the services they offer. They also define these clearly to eliminate the risk
of setting unrealistic expectations.   They highlighted the products that they deliver and that
they offer, the mode of transportation, the nature of transportation, and the technologies that
they use. This helped them to attract the desired group of the target audience and further
retain them in the long term. They improved the quality of their services by improving the
delivery chain system and the quality of packaging. They improved their online presence by
making a clear and visible brand presence on social media.

Solution provided to the clients:

Customer centricity – Delhivery was very customer-centric towards its operation because
they were not following a hub and spoke model. This is a model for doing logistics and it
looks like a bicycle wheel - it's this idea that all packages first go to a central hub, and then
from there, they get delivered to their respective customers - and that delivery of the course is
the spoke. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with this model - it's the same model after
all that the aviation industry uses with airports as the central hub, and customer destinations
as the spokes. But, there's also a big difference between the aviation industry and logistics –
with aviation, customers need to go to the airport, it's where emigration and immigration
happen, security checks and boarding pass printing, airport fuelling, and maintenance – but
logistics doesn't need to be like that. To ride in an Ola cab, you don't need to first go to an Ola
cab station - a central hub where you can board your cab to its final destination.  Instead, you
can order an ola from anywhere, and have it take you anywhere. And, this is what Delhivery
started offering - the Ola or Uber of food and e-commerce delivery.
Delhivery was a Tech-driven company- thanks to Bhavesh Mangalani's tech layer, Delhivery
started being able to collect more and more data from these deliveries, and with this data,
they were able to make their new delivery model even more efficient and precise. They took
the hub and spoke model of their competitors, who at this point didn't even know or care that
Delhivery existed, and they modified it. They upgraded it into a brand-new tech-enabled
mesh model that enabled them to deliver packages faster and cheaper than anybody else.
Delhivery was very efficient in its operations -They started offering first-mile delivery, last-
mile delivery, and middle-mile delivery, as separate standalone services, alongside their
comprehensive, full-service packages. Each part of their delivery service was segmented and
separate, making the business extremely efficient and significantly cheaper than the
competition- I'm talking 70% cheaper by 2017 - that is a huge discount.
Delhivery disrupted the payment cycle of the e-commerce industry -this was a huge pain
point for sellers using traditional logistics services because again, it was designed around the
existing mode of payment in the early 2000s. Back then, there was no UPI, very few people
had credit cards and so, cash-on-delivery reigned supreme but this wasn't working for e-
commerce companies. They were already acting as middlemen between sellers and
customers. And now, they were outsourcing their deliveries to another middleman -
logistics companies. These logistics companies would collect cash on delivery, that cash on
delivery would reach the E-commerce company after 30 days, and then it would take another
30 days for that cash to reach the original seller's bank account. That is a 60-day inefficiency
that Delhivery was able to cut down on significantly. First, they set up collection centers
close to the bank so that delivery drivers could deposit cash on delivery the same day that
they collected it from the end customer. Then, they tied up with banks to ensure that the
money that they collected from the end customer could be delivered to Delhivery’s E-
commerce clients the following day, and they didn't stop there. Eventually, in 2013, they
acquired cash collection startup GharPay, to speed things up further. The result of all of these
efforts was that Delhivery was able to cut down the time for their e-commerce clients to
collect money from 30 days to just two days. Delhivery had just become 15 times faster with
payments than their competition.
Delhivery gave a 30-day free trial to its client- This, like so many of delivery's other
strategies, was unheard of but Delhivery is a technology-driven company. They borrowed this
strategy from the world of software, where 30-day trials are the norm, and of course, after 30
days most of the delivery's customers would start paying them because their service was so
much better than anything else they'd seen. One of their biggest clients at the time, India
Times, was onboarded as a client using this very strategy, and ultimately, they were so
impressed that they became one of Delhivery's first investors in 2012.
CONCLUSION
Delivery’s journey, at the growth and success they've seen as a start-up, it's easy to see why
they succeeded - they put their customers first in an industry that had never done that before. 
But this wasn't something that they achieved in one fell swoop - it was a consistent,
intentional effort on their part, something fundamental to the company's DNA, something
that shaped every decision that the company took from the early days, when they only had a
presence in Gurugram, to today, when they cover 88.3% of all of the pin codes in India.
Delhivery -now, they ended up spending one entire year making mistakes, learning about and
refining their process in Gurugram. And, this made it easy for them to produce
identical results across India. They knew their business so well, it wasn't chance, it wasn't
luck, it was a replicable standardized formula for excellence. While competitors like
Chhothu.in, Dial service, and India On-Time, expanded too quickly and had to shut down
within two to three years of starting operations, they just couldn't crack the scalability
formula as Delhivery did and so, if there's one thing that I want to leave you with here today,
something for you to keep in mind if and when you start your own company,  it's this -
customer-centricity plus the ability to scale is a recipe for success, and if you don't do either
one of these things then you're probably going to fail. If you can't keep your customers happy
or you can't scale your start-up then, another company will. They'll leave you in the dust and
Delhivery was that company for its competitors. They've overtaken their dinosaur
competitors, they’ve outsprinted their start-up competitors and now, they are number one in
India's logistics space, mostly becoming a unicorn.
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