MeraTask fulfills over 4500 deliveries same-day every month in Delhi-NCR

In 2013, when Amazon launched its service in India, it introduced many services which were not known to the Indian market -- and same-day delivery was one. It was soon picked up by the e-commerce major Flipkart.

The same-day delivery offer was to give online users an experience as close as offline. Besides, there is a huge demand from individuals who want to deliver cheques or documents or other products from one part of the city to the other on the same day.

However, there is a lot of intricacies in offering same-day delivery and can’t be replicated by every other company.

Deepak Batra and Piyush Tandon, both from financial services background thought of launching a platform that will solve a problem of people who are short on time. It will be also helpful for small businesses and startups which want to deliver products to their clients on the same day.

In January 2016, they launched MeraTask which provides same day delivery for gifts, electronic gadgets, clothes, flowers, document and other items in Delhi-NCR.

The startup has over 7000 registered clients, including boutiques, startups and individuals who have used the service.

How to use

It is a very simple process. “Users just need to punch in the pick-up and drop details along with the sender's and receiver’s name and mobile number in the app or web. The app further connects users to the nearest tasker who will collect the order and deliver it to the relevant address. Users can also track the tasker in real-time,” explains Piyush Tandon, Co-founder, MeraTask.

The startup has hired 30 on-field taskers, called runners, who do the delivery in Delhi-NCR. It claims to have done more than 100,000 deliveries in the last one-and-a-half years. It does round 150 deliveries a day.

Following a right biz model

Tandon says he believes in profitability that is the only way to a sustainable business. The startup’s business model has two streams -- delivery and advertising.

“Our core is delivery, besides we advertising is another revenue stream. Last year, we had a turnover of about Rs 1.5 crore.”

The startup charges from clients on the basis of distance covered. An item delivered up to 10 km is as low as Rs 170 and up to 40 km is as high as Rs 440. The total weight of an item or items can vary between 5 kg and 50 kg and charges differ accordingly.

Tandon believes the market is really huge. In Delhi-NCR alone, the demand is as high as 100,000 tasks a day and he wants to capture at least 15 per cent of the market, which is fulfilling 15000 tasks a day. The opportunity compounds to multiple times at Pan-India level.

Dealing with competition

There are other startups such as CourierGenie, WeFast, TaskMitra and many others are offering services in the same-day delivery category.

Talking about competition, Tandon says MeraTask is very robust and has a lot of customer friendly features like real time tracking, online invoicing and other features, which set his platform apart from others.

“Customer acquisition is happening organically and through words of mouth. We are also spending a bit on social media and Google ads. We plan to do radio and TV commercials to increase visibility in near future. Now that we have proof of concept, we are also looking forward to launch the service across the country.”