Last Mile Deliveries

As ecommerce takes off in the developing world, with notoriously traffic logged inner cities, all the logistics companies are grappling with the problem of making last mile deliveries.

Making these Home deliveries in the stipulated service windows is no less walking a tight rope - while juggling

• Traffic: the distance is measured in the time required to cover it. It varies as per the day/ time and special situations like dug up roads, public meetings or any VIP visits
• Accuracy of addresses: there is no standard way of specifying an address - since there are no planned cities in the real sense. So people have to rely on landmarks on road help from passer bys or the roadside vendors for reaching a place. Google maps is being used increasingly though it can only help to get closest to the landmark and then you are on your own
• Availability of Delivery Boys: the face of the ecommerce merchants are increasingly hard to get and retain - though this is a semi skilled job
• Settlement of Fuel expenses - 
• Handling Cash on Delivery - a large portion of the ecommerce purchases are still paid with cash on delivery of the goods which raises issues of returning the exact change, securing the cash collected through the day, depositing it at end of day and settling accounts  
• Mobile Net connectivity to handle Card payments on deliveries: Not every 
• Availability of clients: while some ecommerce merchants give a choice of delivery window due to various reasons these cannot be always met. even if they are the clients might not be available to make the payment and take delivery. The package could be kept with a neighbour with the apartment concierge/ security, try again later in the day or leave a note asking the clients to pick up from the delivery hub (making them really unhappy)

Some options being increasingly leveraged include

• Transshipment Centers on Urban suburbs through which goods are moved to smaller environmentally-friendly vehicles like electric scooters
• Mobile Warehouses through Truck-trailers which can actually get closer to the urban zones enough to transfer packages to last mile vehicles
• Fulfilling deliveries from closest retail outlet which could be company owned, a franchisee or even a independent store in sort of alliance with the e-tailer
• Automated Lockers for parcel pickup by individuals at convenient locations. Being rolled out in US by FedEx and widely used by Deutsche Post DHL in Germany (Packstations)
• Crowdsourcing is an option being explored and implemented on a trial basis in different markets - in which a loosely aligned groups of commuters make deliveries on their daily to work routes

Cracking this riddle is crucial not only for the future of ecommerce for the urban areas but also to mitigate the growing pollution in the urban areas.