How These Entrepreneurs Are Delightfully Personalising On Demand Delivery The demand for food never goes. Apps have made it easier for us with food now just a click away! With these new ventures customer now can customise their choices further!

When you think of daily necessities, food is probably the first thing that springs to mind! It is also the first thing one thinks of in times of celebrations and occasions. The demand for food never goes, and we end up binging on our choicest cuisines. Apps have made it easier for us with food at home or office now just a click away! Facilitating further ease are a new set of brands which enable customers order anything anywhere! Well almost!

Meet Saurav Jhawar, founder, Obo Swift. An on-demand personalised delivery service, Obo is now going to launch a food app to give users the option of selecting any spot for delivery while on the go. Jhawar has tied up with 70 restaurants across Kolkata to start with.

"We are excited that we will be adding home bakers also and bringing on board home cooked food as well. Riders are being recruited across the city," he added. Jhawar is going strong partnering with 65 bakers, 18 home cooks, boutiques, designers of handmade fashion accessories in Kolkata. Currently he has 45 riders across the city and each rider does almost 8-9 deliveries a day.

We deliver just everything, sparing the hassle of dealing with traffic, queues, shortage of exact change etc; time that you can invest in other productive activities," shared Jhawar.

Obo's services range from on-demand, reverse deliveries, first mile and last mile logistics. It also takes care of delivery requirement of local businesses. Due to its local delivery network and logistic technology, merchants can deliver to their customers in a cost effective way. The revenue structure is also simple and cost effective as Obo bills its customers on a per-delivery-basis deciding by distance travelled and the service required.

Presently, Obo Swift operates in Ethiopia, and Kolkata in India, and Jhawar has his eyes on Bangalore next and has already started recruiting riders there. The company's co-founder, Madhuri Chalke, who joined Obo swift 7 months ago, handles the day to day operations in both the countries, and the coordinators in both cities report to her.

A No-Inventory Model

"Variety is the spice of life – the idea has been taken very seriously by Saurabh Dhanuka, founder, Jab We Ate, another on demand food supplying company which provides party food orders. One can choose from a menu of more than 500 items covering cuisines from Indian, Chinese, Continental, to Italian, Burmese, Mexican and so on. It is Kolkata's first multi cuisine delivery company founded in 2015 with branches in Delhi and Mumbai.

"Today, many host house parties at home and rather than eating typical restaurant food, prefer home cooked restaurant styled food. That is what triggered the idea of Jab We Ate. We also have a bakery section offering more than 50 varieties of desserts along with customized cake solutions and latest trending cakesicles," notified Dhanuka.

Being into bulk food solution it was not possible for Dhanuka to deliver orders in bikes. He was focused on in-house delivery since inception and has put in place an in house delivery team along with support staffs.

Technology is in optimum use at Dhanuka's. WhatsApp is one of the most used medium and 80% of the orders are booked solely over this platform. Very soon the young-preneur will have his delivery vehicles with Jab We Ate branding on it. "We use Uber on a very large scale and have trained our staffs in using the service. Currently, we have three delivery staff and among them 2 bikers who delivers cakes and desserts and one who delivers party food orders in Uber," he shared.

The USP about Jab We Ate is that it works on a 0% inventory model. Cooking is only done when there is an order so that customer gets to eat fresh food always and there is no wastage. "We have kept an order booking mechanism with buffer of at least 48 hours i.e. customer needs to pre book their orders with us. Till date, we never encountered any food wastage," he enthused.

Dhanuka's plan is to set Jab We Ate in major metros and tier 2 and 3 cities. "We have launched Jab We Ate in Delhi last year and are going to Mumbai by end of this year. Jaipur and Pune come next," he informed.

Where Delivery Is Contact-less

Even after using all the available e-grocers Sagar Yarnalkar and Anurag Gupta found them running to the local corner shop at night to pick up a few items. The duo thought that the convenience of ordering late night and getting it delivered the next morning without any hassle would be a great experience for everyone, and came up with the concept of Dailyninja in 2015.

The app enables households to order milk and groceries till 11pm at night and the order is delivered outside the doors by 7 am the next day. DailyNinja's business model by nature latches onto the Indian habit of purchasing fresh milk every day.

"Once this is moved online, the high engagement generated by this habit makes it is easy for DailyNinja to cross sell groceries, home services and medicines to the customer to help them manage their household in an efficient manner. Our customers are used to a prepaid payment system that ensures negative working capital and we deliver exclusively through an existing network of milk vendors that keeps our per order delivery costs to Rs.2 an order," explained Gupta.

The ideal Dailyninja customers subscribes for a liter of milk every day, a packet of curd every alternate day, 2 tender coconuts every day, a kilo of onion-potato-tomato every week and atta every month. "Every order that you place with Dailyninja is delivered outside your door before 7am by your milkman, at a time when you would be at home. The delivery is contact-less, we won't ring your doorbell unless you ask us to. We have 400 milk vendor partners across Bangalore and Hyderabad presently," notified the duo.

Dailyninja delivers household needs to 25000 households every day. It reached the 7.5 million orders fulfilled milestone last month and is growing fast. The founders are now planning to reach 100k (1 lakh) orders a day by the end of this year. We have recently launched services in Hyderabad and will be launching services in two more cities soon.

Adding Sweetness To Lives

Dhawal Shah founded The Dessert Street in 2016 after he did his diploma from Le Cordon Bleu, London. Shah saw missing places in the dessert industry in terms of quality, finishing and even flavours, and decided to bridge that gap with great quality and appealing products. He uses the finest ingredients like Belgian chocolate and sources the vanilla from South India.

"Our policy is to reduce wastage of ingredients and products thus we came up with the concept of working on made-to-order basis. There is good demand for our products which can be customised in diverse shapes, flavour and colour," shared Shah.

However, to start with, delivery was his main hassle but he addressed it by procuring insulated-bags and cold packs which keep cakes and chocolates at the right temperature.

"We currently have two riders who take care of our deliveries; they are highly experienced and trained in handling delicate desserts like ours. Our future plan is to get a larger fleet so we can cover more areas," informed Shah who is also planning to get into the retail segment.