Courier service start-up to 'Uberise' Mumbai's dabbawala network

App-based courier service Paper N Parcels has tied up with Mumbai’s famous dabbawalas to leverage their network to facilitate door to door delivery of packages within the city.

The founder, 8th-grade student Tilak Mehta called this “Uberising” courier services as leveraging this network of over 5000 dabbawalas also meant deliveries could be made at prices as low as Rs 40 to a maximum of Rs 180. The courier service has a weight limit of 3 kgs.

Currently, the company has over 300 registered dabbawalas working as part of the delivery team and an additional 180 of their own workforce. The startup is completely bootstrapped by the parent company Rushabh Sealink. The beta run of the company has witnessed up to 1200 deliveries on a daily basis.

Founder Tilak Mehta is an 8th grade student. (Photo: Kamlesh Pednekar)

“Our business model is B2B, B2C and C2C all of which we will aggressively foray into. We are targeting 1 lakh deliveries per day by the end of 2019 and plan to employ around 2000 people,” said Ghanshyam Parekh, CEO, Paper N Parcels.

While they did not share the exact nature of investments so far but the company is targeting a Rs 1 billion turnover by 2020.  Initially, for up to three months delivery persons will work on a fixed income model beyond which the model will change to accommodate per delivery payments. The service will be available for pick and drop of couriers across the Churchgate-Borivali Line, CST-Khargar line and CST-Thane train lines as the trains are the primary mode of transport for the dabbawala network.

The business model depends on dabbawalas making deliveries post their usual food delivery shifts and while the Mumbai Dabbawala association hasn’t partnered with the company they are encouraging delivery persons to boost their regular income through the courier service.

Across the country, hyper-local delivery services are increasingly being leveraged by startups and conglomerates alike in a bid to reach the last mile customer. E-commerce players like Google, Amazon and Flipkart apart from retail giant Future Group and Reliance Jio are all in the fray to provide hyper-local services to a small community as the next big market opportunity. Even, online grocery platforms such as BigBasket and Grofers have also already managed to create a presence in this space. Unilever Ventures has earlier in the year invested in a hyper-local delivery startup Milkbasket.