The Rise of Hyperlocal Deliveries and its Benefits for E-commerce – https://www.indianretailer.com/

The market share of hyperlocal delivery services worldwide is estimated to reach US$ 3,634.3 billion by 2027. That’s a 17.9 percent CAGR from 2021 to 2027. Quite literally then, hyperlocal delivery is taking the world by storm. 

Naturally, more and more e-commerce businesses and 3PLs are rushing to include hyperlocal delivery in their service repertoire. But the first industry to jump on the hyperlocal delivery bandwagon was food delivery businesses. And with a good reason.

Hyperlocal delivery’s unique feature is that it can provide lightning-fast deliveries within a limited geographical area, say 5-15 km, by sourcing products directly from the local vendors. This feature immediately fell in line with food delivery businesses because customers tend to order food when they are starting to get hungry. And the best way to keep those customers happy is by delivering steaming hot food as soon as possible. But this was only the beginning.

In 2014, with the entry of major restaurant aggregators like Zomato, Dunzo, and Swiggy, the hyperlocal delivery market exploded. Hyperlocal became the go-to service for food delivery businesses all over the world. In fact, the number of online food orders increased by 56 percent from 2019 to 2020. This was before the pandemic began and changed the face of online delivery forever.

Changing Consumer Behavior 

For the past 30 years since it has been operational, e-commerce has never changed as much as it did in the past 2 years since the pandemic began. 

As countries went into lockdowns and shops closed down, customers resorted to online shopping to meet their daily needs. In fact, compared with May 2019, e-commerce sales more than doubled in the year, seeing a 110.8 percent increase. Even tier II and tier III cities that were previously outside the ambit of online commerce have contributed heavily to its popularity during the pandemic. A lot of that was possible because of food, pharmaceutical, and grocery companies offering quick hyperlocal deliveries to customers. 

Call it the Amazon effect or the success of hyperlocal deliveries, the pandemic completely changed consumer behavior. Today’s customers are not happy with long estimated dates of delivery. In fact, shipping costs and longer EDDs are two of the biggest reasons for cart abandonment. As a result, e-commerce businesses and logistics partners have had to figure out ways to meet rising customer expectations. 

Hyperlocal delivery is an attractive and truly potent way of delivering orders to customers at the earliest. Most hyperlocal deliveries will take anywhere between 45 minutes to a few hours for order delivery depending on the geographical area and the proximity of local stores. 

How Hyperlocal Delivery Companies Have Changed Over the Years

Some noteworthy hyperlocal delivery companies that have brought on a revolution in the e-commerce order delivery space are Zomato, Swiggy, Dunzo, Blowhorn, Wefast, Grab, Pidge, Grofers, etc. Barring a few, most of these hyperlocal delivery companies have diversified to provide delivery of items outside food, pharmaceuticals, and …….

Source: https://www.indianretailer.com/article/technology/digital-trends/the-rise-of-hyperlocal-deliveries-and-its-benefits-for-e-commerce.a7558/