Casualties increasing - Hyper local delivery
Sanket Dantara
Ideate, Create and Scale | Go To Market | Partnerships | Products | Strategy | Business Development | Customer Success | M&A | FP&A | Transformation
I had written about my reservations on food delivery and groceries delivery in June (read it here and here) and we are now beginning to see the cracks so to speak.
After its second round of layoffs, TinyOwl co-founder was held hostage by former employees. Food Panda is rumored to sell its India operations. Dazo shut down due to lack of funding.
Local Banya pivoted its business model and shed jobs and temporarily shut operations, though others say its for renovation of the website, which I find it hard to digest.
EkStop disappeared after being acquired.
I agree that there are an equal or larger number of new players entering the space, but the magnitude of the challenge to solve hyper local delivery, while differentiating and generating a profit has started taking its toll and with the euphoria around the India start-up scene (driven mainly by e commerce valuations) dying down and funding becoming more selective, we will see only more casualties
Ideate, Create and Scale | Go To Market | Partnerships | Products | Strategy | Business Development | Customer Success | M&A | FP&A | Transformation
9 年Clive Rodrigues I agree. Just wondering how one could differentiate. Very limited options. The first one to crack this will capture a sizable market.
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9 年Good article Sanket. We have all been seeing how the curtain has been raising and most of us don't like what we see. I still think this is the only way forward but now there will be more introspection and more realistic models built. The business premise will change and price may not be the main focus.
CxO & EI Leadership Coach| Mentor | Ex Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, PwC, Heinz |Regional Director, Board Member
9 年sometimes, I feel we take the "e" thing too far and fragment and silo the value chain too much as lead to value loss. Rather than having a independent Buy, Carry and Deliver model it might be better for some of these players to offer a pure carry and deliver service.
Ideate, Create and Scale | Go To Market | Partnerships | Products | Strategy | Business Development | Customer Success | M&A | FP&A | Transformation
9 年Venkatraman C K, I agree, and even if you get loyal customers and manage churn, the premise of the business is based on "convenience" and unless you are able to charge a convenience fee, margins will be low. And in the race for customer acquisition, they were all giving discounts on a already low margin business. So till the time the tap was open, in terms of easy funding, you could afford the burn rate. But once the tap closes or the flow slows down, some imploded and others folded
CxO & EI Leadership Coach| Mentor | Ex Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, PwC, Heinz |Regional Director, Board Member
9 年I guess it is hard to differentiate in this business. Customer loyalty takes long time to build.