‘Minimum Order Amount’, ‘Maximum Delivery Area’, and ‘Delivery Time’, these terms are very familiar to anyone who frequently orders food, but what if you were told that these terms are no longer required when it comes to home delivery of not only food but almost everything deliverable. What if you are sick and need to get your medicine? Do you walk all the way to the chemist or would you love to get it delivered to your place? The second option sounds a little off track, but this is now possible. With VDeliver, you can get anything from food and groceries to even medicines delivered at your doorstep.
Sensing the necessity to deliver without any restrictions, Chennai-based VDeliver with the tagline ‘anything, anywhere, anytime’ was launched in April 2011. It is a hyper local logistics service which serves 50+ businesses across various industries and its major clients include some big names like Titan Eye+, Gifting Happiness, and Startup Leadership Program.
The Quest behind VDeliver
A quest for Idly delivering restaurants and sickness in a new town is all it took for the founder, Srinivas Madhavam to start VDeliver. A mechanical engineer by profession, Madhavam was suffering from fever in Chennai and wanted to get a couple of idlis delivered to his place. Being new to town, he had no help and none of the chemists was ready to deliver him medicines and he couldn’t manage to get the food delivered because the order was either too small or out of delivery area. To put an end to these restrictions, he came up with the idea of VDeliver.
The founder, Srinivas Madhavam, hails from Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh and takes care of the overall growth and marketing of the company. Co-Founder A S K Chaitanya Reddy, a Childhood Friend of Madhavam, joined full time in March 2014 and has been heading the operations and technology of the company ever since. The current team has 22 members including the two co-founders.
How Does this Work?
Vdeliver receives the order over the telephone or the through the online delivering system. After confirmation and successful selection of payment mode, the order is executed and service charges are paid. The delivery time depends on the order. In case of food or groceries the usual time varies between 1-2 hours while in case of documents and other deliverables, it varies based on the type of order, the distance of the place and whether it is inter-city or intracity.
Revenue Model
The primary and direct source of revenue for the startup is from both individual customers & local business including local ecommerce portals. The Secondary source of revenue is the income generated through commissions charged to the restaurants for giving an order. Other sources of income include advertising through the delivered parcel as a medium.
Their monthly revenue clocks up to around INR 2.5 lakh per month off which 20% income is from the secondary source while the remaining 80% is primary revenue generation.
The Challenges
Most of the restaurants today offer free home delivery and convincing customers to pay for delivery turned out to be a challenge says Madhavam. But, since VDeliver is all about restriction free delivery, it wasn’t very difficult to get a grasp of the market. To overcome the high attrition rate, the company started hiring only graduates and believes in instilling dignity of labour, paying higher salaries and giving them due respect as a human being.
The Numbers Game
Present in 4 Cities, 3 States with 20+ Employees, 50+ Business Clientele, 5000+ Individual Customers and 10000+ Orders delivered till date, VDeliver has achieved a 99.99% delivery commitment rate including document deliveries being done every day for M/s Vodafone, Chennai.
Also, since it delivers anything to the customers at the comfort of their home/office, 40% of the customers come back for their delivery needs.
With an aim to create an Intra City Logistics and then an Inter-city logistics, VDeliver has a potential market of $100 Bn.
The Coming Days
The next Target city for VDeliver will be Vishakhapatnam and gradually it will be expanding to the Bangalore, Cochin and further it aims to have its presence in all the states of South India.
Also, the team plans to take up a marketing campaign which will include digital marketing, display cards on Unisex Saloon Mirrors, Posters across various residential communities and Painting Mini Trucks which roam across the City.
Other additions might include delivery of Wedding Cards on behalf of the wedding hosts and delivering shopping bags from the malls and shopping complexes to your home. Even after the introduction of new startups everyday, VDeliver proudly claims to be the first hyper local logistics startup.
Our Take
Since the industry they are targeting is a $100 Bn market, VDeliver has to set their levels of perfection accordingly. Also, delivery of anything available in the market is a good concept and it does not hurt to shed a few extra bucks to get everything delivered right at your doorstep.
