Can smart boxes help restructure ecommerce deliveries?

All leading ecommerce companies are exploring options to optimize the expenses associated with logistics. Recently Yes Bank came up with its smart boxes where buyers could collect their online purchases. Yes Bank carried out a pilot run at Delhi with plans to extend it to other cities.

Ecommerce companies are increasingly looking at solutions to deal with logistics issues. Recently Flipkart associated itself with Apollo Pharmacy, where the buyers could pick up their deliveries from selected outlets of the pharmacy.

Smart boxes can work where the customers are unavailable, or inaccessible. It can also help increase the number of deliveries per delivery boy, thereby reducing the costs significantly.

New player in the segment

A Delhi based start-up is coming up with a practical solution for the logistics bottlenecks of ecommerce companies. Smartbox Ecommerce Solutions, as its name suggests, plans to set up a series of smart boxes where the customers can collect their consignments from. The intention of Smartbox (founded in January by Amit and Vineet Sawhney) is to reduce the expenses caused by multiple attempts to deliver a product, in the absence of the buyer.

Smartbox’s modus operandi

Smartbox has set up a series of boxes in 125 locations in Delhi and NCR. When carrying out the purchase, the buyer gets the option of ‘Smartbox’ as a mode of payment. Upon selecting it, the product is delivered to the Smartbox nearest to the buyer’s location. Payment is made using a card, which opens the box.

Sawhney says,

“The user will receive an OTP, in case of a prepaid order the locker will open as soon as the OTP is punched in. In other cases, the installation has a CSOD (card swipe on delivery) option for payment.”

Similarly, for returns, the buyer can raise a request; place the order in the box using an OTP.

In the present situation, delivery and even returns sometimes requires multiple tries. Smartbox’s Amit Sawhney explains this,

“A lot of orders are delivered when users are not at home and the parcel is then taken back. A few housing societies have stringent security rules. Some corporates have fixed timings for delivery in premises and in some cases deliveries are not permitted in the corporate parks.”

Hopefully, the introduction of smart boxes can help simplify the problems in ecommerce logistics.