Revolution in Shenzhen Drones fly between skyscrapers in the Chinese city delivering food

Drone Delivery: Revolution in Urban Commerce

Meituan, the giant and most popular Chinese delivery platform, is revolutionizing urban commerce with drone delivery in dense urban areas such as Shenzhen, China. This innovative service, already operational for a year and a half, offers a new way of making fast and efficient deliveries, even in the most challenging scenarios, and what reinforces the strength of this operation are its 6 million temporary employees to guarantee the billions of orders.

How it works:

Meituan's drones deliver parcels to kiosks strategically located near residential and commercial buildings, thus avoiding the complexity of delivering directly to people's doorsteps and also catering to the Chinese consumer who orders a lot of meals in their apartments. The drones operate until 19:00. It should be pointed out that these populated areas full of buildings are the most difficult to meet or respect regulatory requirements and rules, and we should also appreciate Meituan's progress, which is leaps and bounds ahead of US competitors Amazon, Google's Alphabet or Walmart, which are moving much more slowly and slowly.

The operation of the drones is coordinated by a centralized algorithm and the trajectories are predefined. According to a company spokesperson, "It is possible to accurately anticipate, at any given moment, the exact location of each drone and its speed. This ensures that consumers can count on an arrival window of just two seconds of variation, instead of the three minutes or even ten minutes of conventional deliveries."

The company has a central control center in Shenzhen, from where employees have the ability to take control of the drones in emergency situations. Currently, more than a hundred drones are available to make deliveries in the city. On average, one operator oversees the operation of ten drones simultaneously.

Case: The Hub on the Roof

Meituan manages its drones in Shenzhen from distribution centers.

A drink order came from a location just a few hundred meters away from the client's apartment, where it came off the roof of a large shopping mall. This space in turn was converted into a hub for drones, with a small support team. It was observed that there were around ten drones parked there, with another two or three landing or taking off. After the lunch rush, as reported by a Meituan employee, both drones and humans were resting and recharging their batteries for dinner deliveries. The work process combines human and automated elements. After the drone delivery system receives an order (customers select items designated for drone delivery in the company's app), a (human) operator goes to one of the restaurants, all located in the mall, to pick up the order and take it to the launch hub. The operator places the food and drink in a standard cardboard box, uses a scale to ensure there is no excess weight, seals the package and hands it over to another employee who specializes in handling drones. This second employee positions the box under the drone and waits for it to click into place.

Regulatory and economic limits

In terms of national policies, the central government has also granted Shenzhen, one of the country's Special Economic Development Areas, greater autonomy over the regulation of commercial drones. For this reason, Meituan has chosen to conduct most of its drone delivery tests in Shenzhen so far. Although it has recently established a new route in Shanghai and occasionally uses drones in other cities, Shenzhen will remain the epicenter of this activity. So far, there have been no reports of incidents involving Meituan drones. Although in other parts of the world delivery drones have rarely caused injury to humans, there are occasional crashes that result in forest fires and power outages.

Benefits

• Efficiency: Fast and accurate deliveries within a set time frame.
• Safety: Advanced technology and strict regulations guarantee safe operations.
• Sustainability: Recyclable packaging and reduced use of motorized vehicles.

Challenges and the future

• Regulation: Despite technological advances, regulations and infrastructure limit the expansion of the service.
• Human and Automated Integration: Meituan aims to integrate more and more automation into the delivery process, while maintaining essential human involvement.

Future prospects

Although there are still obstacles to overcome, drone delivery has the potential to become a fundamental part of urban commerce, complementing human labor and offering a more efficient and convenient delivery experience for consumers. There is still an expectation that approximately 5% to 10% of deliveries will be made by drones in the near future.

As for the futuristic vision of drones making deliveries directly to the windows of homes, Mao Yinian, director of the company's drone delivery service, expresses: "I believe this will become a reality in the long term, but it could take around 20 to 30 years," Mao projects. "This is due to the time needed to update the infrastructure, especially in terms of residential buildings."

Felipe Salvador is a C-Level executive with extensive experience in sales, strategy and marketing in an innovative way in the retail and technology (martech) segments. Focused on economic prosperity and corporate management, he manages key results with speed, creating probable scenarios using combinatorial mathematics and market intelligence. ESG Project Ambassador, columnist and partner of blogs or corporate portals in Brazil, USA and Argentina, he has more than 11.3 million annual views, extensive/qualified personal and business relationships and national and international awards as the best student of disruptive strategies at Harvard in 2021.