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Exclusive: Zomato pilots new service for last-mile deliveries across corporate parks

Entrackr · 7m

Zomato appears to be trialing a new service wherein the company is ensuring last mile delivery for office goers through a stationed team. The service seems to be an attempt to streamline deliveries inside tech and corporate parks to ensure timely deliveries and save rider’s time. It also reduces the hassle for an employee in collecting the food as many offices do not allow delivery partners beyond the reception area. As spotted in Gurugram, Zomato has set up a micro hub at an office premise where the delivery partners can deliver the food. Then, a “walker” picks up the food parcel and hands it over to a customer on their respective floor or exact location. It’s likely Zomato has made some arrangements with such corporate parks to whitelist these last-mile delivery partners. Moreover, Zomato is promising “no calls from delivery partners”, and dedicated “walkers” for each floor. Entrackr has reached out to Zomato for a comment on the same. According to sources, Zomato is piloting the service at around five-six places in Gurugram, including Unitech Cyber Park. “It’s an experiment at the moment and the company would scale this service across top five cities depending on the outcome of the pilot,” said one of the sources requesting anonymity. Another source disclosed that one of the hubs where this service is being trialed receives roughly 100 to 150 orders a day, and is likely to increase in the near future. Setting up kiosks at busy locations such as corporate parks is new for online food ordering platforms, but such a concept is widely popular in China where companies like Meituan have been leveraging stationed teams for efficient deliveries across areas which houses large corporations and startups. While time would decide the relevance of such a concept, logistics companies such as QuikPod tried to create a network of lockers across corporate and residential societies to streamline e-commerce deliveries. QuikPod also raised $9 million from Flipkart and Accel Partners but it didn’t manage any scale and currently appears to be in stealth mode.