Exclusive | Quick commerce eating into kiranas, not ecommerce: Delhivery CEO Sahil Barua
logistics firm Delhivery’s chief executive Sahil Barua says the economics of deliveries in 10-15 minutes may not be sustainable for categories beyond groceries and fast-moving consumer goods. In an interview with ET’s Pranav Mukul and Samidha Sharma, he says the timelines will start increasing as the cost of quick deliveries becomes apparent. Delhivery, which swung back into a profit for the April-June quarter, is launching a network of shared dark stores for brands and ecommerce players to deliver in 2-4 hours, but will steer clear of instant deliveries, says Barua, who is also an independent director at IPO-bound food and grocery delivery firm Swiggy. Edited excerpts:
Revenue growth has been slow for Delhivery over the past year. Is there pressure on your top line?
Our express parcel business, which is the ecommerce-linked segment…is reflective of market conditions. Our volume growth could have been slightly higher but last year, Meesho launched Valmo (its logistics vertical) and overall volumes for third-party players have been constrained a little bit. We’re relatively less affected given that we don’t have too much dependence on Meesho, but overall volumes available on the third-party side have come down. Plus, this is the period where we have commercial renegotiations with a lot of our customers. So, until that’s done, the volume uplift takes a little bit of time.
What’s the focus going forward?
The PTL (part-truck load) business has been our primary focus for the last two or three years. The larger we get
