I came home because of the COVID-19 lockdown so that I could take care of my parents, who are above 60 years of age. I have been in Siliguri since March 24th.
When I came here, my parents asked me to get groceries from a Kirana (grocery) store. I looked for grocery home delivery services, but to my surprise, couldn’t find any. Soon I realized that home delivery services are common only in the tier-1 cities. Residents in tier-2 cities still have to step out to purchase essentials.
Thereafter, when I went to the local grocery store, I found myself surrounded by a crowd of buyers, completely defeating the purpose of social distancing and putting the potentially healthy population at a massive health risk. Finally, reading some local news, I learnt that multiple delivery agents in Siliguri are dealing with unemployment due to reduced restaurant delivery orders. Many are contemplating going back to their villages to reduce the cost of making ends meet in a tier-2 city.
The urge to solve these three problems gave me the idea to start “Janta Delivery”, a hyperlocal logistics service that delivers groceries and other essential items to a customer’s doorstep.
Within three days, I pulled together a five-member team and sorted out operations, starting Janta Delivery with three primary goals:
- Deliver grocery to the doorstep so that people can still respect social distancing.
- Employ to migrant workers so that they can sustain their livelihood.
- Discourage people from hoarding groceries by providing them with a reliable delivery service offering.
In tier-2 towns, the network of Kirana stores is very strong. People have confidence in the quality of products supplied by a few selected grocery stores in their locality. Hence, to source our supply, we collaborated with a few famous grocery stores in Siliguri, who have won the goodwill of the residents here in terms of the quality.
The offering is quite simple. A customer places her grocery order by sending a Whatsapp text on +91-76022-50045 or through our website. Once the order is received, it is sent to the respective store and our team coordinates with them for order preparation. Once the order is prepared, the nearest delivery agent is informed to pick up the order along with the bill and pays for it upfront.
Then the delivery agent meets the customer, hands over the bill made by the network store, receives the payment of the bill amount along with INR 50 delivery charges and hands over the ordered items to the customer. All the coordination is currently done over phone calls or Whatsapp texts.
Impact
We are doing more than 40 orders per day. We expect this to increase as the lockdown gets extended and as we expand to offer other essential items like medicines and vegetables. We delivered more than 250 orders in the first 15 days of operations and have prevented more than 1,400 people from stepping out to buy their essentials.