DotZot, PICKUP to launch PUDO outlets for e-commerce customers

Pick-up and drop-off centres allow buyers to collect or return goods ordered online

DotZot, e-commerce delivery arm of DTDC, has partnered with France-based PICKUP services to convert hundreds of DTDC outlets into pick up and delivery points for e-commerce companies across India.

The last mile delivery of goods is a challenge for most e-commerce companies and Dotzot joins others such as Connect India to offer specific outlets for firms such as Flipkart and Amazon to drop goods for their consumers.

India is the first market outside Europe for PICKUP, which has a concept called pick-up and drop-off (PUDO) centres that allow online customers to collect or return goods ordered through of various e-commerce portals.

Dotzot has a presence across 10,000 pin codes in India, the firm said.

"While India is emerging as a promising e-commerce market, there are a lot of white spaces, especially in distribution, to be filled in," said Diego Magdelenat, co-founder and chief executive officer of PICKUP services.

According to Sanjiv Kathuria, co-founder and chief executive officer of DotZot, partnering with PICKUP will help his company in setting up technologically-advanced PUDO centres. "PICKUP's success in the European market coupled with its efficient technology backend is an advantage for us. PUDO's mobility-based technology platform will help us design a perfect network, and monitor and track the goods," he said.

Initially, the plan is to launch PUDO centres in 15 cities, including the five metros and a few Tier-I cities like Ahmedabad, Pune, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Chandigarh. DotZot looks to expand to 125 cities by the end of 2016.

The company expects to spend around Rs 25 crore as part of setting up 6,000 PUDO centres across India in the first year. A major share of the expenditure will be channeled towards installing Android-based PUDO devices and to train personnel to handle the goods across the centres.

The PUDO model of distribution will bring down the cost of delivery by 15% per product for online companies, claims DotZot and PICKUP services.

"As e-commerce market grows in India, it is becoming more challenging to handle last-mile delivery, especially in the rural areas. Hence, it's high-time we look at alternative models to solve this problem," Kathuria said.

In addition, it is estimated that, if the current rate of growth in the delivery space continues, India will require an additional one million delivery boys by 2020, which will be difficult to be met with.

Though e-commerce is a recent phenomenon in India, the high cost of delivery has already prompted online companies to pilot similar projects here.

Currently, Amazon India has the largest network of pickup and return centres covering about 800 cities across India. In July, Flipkart had piloted experience zones across 20 ties in India that allowed customers to pick up goods from these centres according to their convenience.