You see them everywhere now, at your doorstep, on the road with their huge backpacks. Their bikes zip right around you on the streets. They are our delivery boys, a rising blue-collar army. These delivery boys are an important part of the mechanism, which is contributing to make the e Commerce industry the cream of the crop from the rest. We are seeing a huge spike in entrepreneurs venturing out in the e Commerce space and being a part of this growth story. One of the recent success stories in the field of e-commerce logistics is of a 30-year-old Sahil Barua, Co Founder & CEO of Delhivery. Sahil was a former consultant with Bain & Company and one of the first to spot the potential of e Commerce logistics in India.
Delhivery is a state of the art Logistics Company that is focused on creating an exceptional retail experience by giving speedy and customizable technology for e Commerce companies. Sahil completed his MBA from IIM Bangalore in 2008. After his Three years stint as a consultant with Bain & company and finding himself at the crossroads of stagnation and boredom, he along with his colleague Suraj Saharan started Delhivery. Back then, in 2011, Delhivery was just a simple hyper-local food delivery startup with just five employees.
Sahil was desperate to fill in technological gaps and was not able to find the suitable candidate to take care of the technological needs of firm, that’s when he picked up his phone and in the last attempt tried contacting his long lost friend Bhavesh Mangalani who immediately jumped on the wagon and quit his job at Idea Cellular to be a part of Delhivery. Bhavesh later took over operations when their last Co Founder Kapil Bharti who is now the CTO of the firm replaced him.
At present, Delhivery has a presence in more than 180 cities and at present has more than 3500 employees. But not so long time ago Delhivery was just a small time hyper-local food delivery startup till Sahil spotted the potential of e Commerce logistics industry. He says that Delhivery was the early version of companies like TinyOwl and Swiggy, while being the food delivery hyper-local they ended up delivering food to people who were in the business of e Commerce. They told them “if they can deliver food in half hour why can’t you do deliveries for our products.” And that’s when they decided to reinvent themselves and provide technology-driven logistics solutions to the e Commerce section, which made Delhivery into a multi-million dollar valued company today. Even though the on-demand delivery market has lately picked up Sahil feels that there are still huge problems in the e Commerce logistics area that needs to be addressed before they re-enter the food delivery market.
Not many know that Sahil a year back also made it to the Forbes 30-under-30 list, he strongly believes that the best way to get a customer is to walk up to them and ask them what problem they’re facing. He says, “IndiaTimes was not happy with whom they were working for at the time and wanted someone who could deliver in 24 hours. We said we’d do it for them.” That’s how they signed up the account. He solidly feels that the reason for his success is because he embraces technology and makes it his prime focus. He says that whether you are doing any kind of business, restaurant delivery, e Commerce, etc. Technology makes all the difference. One needs to have the focus on changing technology all the time.
Currently, Delhivery is valued at $350 – 400 million, and it aims to make the entire e Commerce logistics business cost effective and bring down the cost of delivering per box from $2 to 0.55 cents. This tells us one thing that can be carved in stone that under the leadership of Sahil Barua and their Co Founders, Delhivery has come a long way from being a express delivery service of cakes and flowers to the India’s fastest growing e Commerce fulfillment firm with skyrocketing revenues.
