Hyperlocal is an investor-darling right now in India. As a proof of that, another B2B hyperlocal delivery service, Pickingo, has raised $1.3 million in a round led by Rehan Yar Khan of Orios Venture Partners with participation from Zishaan Hayath. The startup is based out of Gurgaon.
The venture specializes in transporting items between merchants and customers in six cities (New Delhi, Jaipur, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad). This fresh capital is apparently going to be utilized by the company in building technology, geographical expansion and customer acquisition.
The firm aims to provide local merchants with a reliable and affordable on-demand alternative to hiring their own delivery staff.
Founded in December 2014, Pickingo started out with reverse-pickups for e-commerce players such as Jabong, Snapdeal, Shopclues, and PayTM across six cities. This was a policy that took care of the return of products which were dispatched by these e-commerce websites.
The company currently has more than 300 restaurants, groceries, and pharmacies signed up for its service. The merchant adoption rate has also increased exponentially since the firm’s launch.
We are a technology-driven platform. Automating the platform and building a robust online system will be our priority. In hyper-local delivery segment, we intend to expand to more than 20 cities by the end of the year.
Logistics is a very exciting space right now. Huge supply and demand are present in different planes of cost, time, and geography, we just need to match them using technology to unlock a large number of transactions.
says Rahul Gill, CEO and Co-founder, Pickingo.
The company has contracts with large clients like Grofers and Chaayos, a cafe chain in New Delhi and claims processing around 700 orders per day in New Delhi and 3,000 orders for reverse pickups in all six of the cities it operates in at present.
Talking about the investment, Rehan Yar Khan, Founder & Partner at Orios Venture Partners, says,
We have already seen this model become a huge success in China with billion dollar players emerging within a year of starting up; and also in the US. Players like Pickingo will enable reliable and efficient movement of goods from the merchant to the consumer, vice versa and eventually even between consumers.
“Just like in other verticals such as food, grocery, and laundry etc., hyperlocal logistics will be disrupted through on-demand, players using an uberized model.”, added Khan.
