Brands of India: Pickrr CTO Gaurav Mangla shares how automation in technology will change the logistics industry

According to IBEF, the size of the Indian logistic industry is $215 billion, and this figure is only expected to grow in the coming years. The industry counts several players who are adopting automation and newer technologies to drive more growth in the logistics industry, which, in turn, will help the D2C sector as well. 

Founded in 2015, Pickrr is an end-to-end SaaS-based logistics-tech startup for ecommerce platforms. The company helps several big and small brands reroute their logistics and efficiently deliver products.

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At YourStory’s flagship Brands of India initiative, Gaurav Mangla, Co-founder and CTO, Pickrr says that since the beginning of the pandemic, the logistics sector has been faced with a lot of disruptions. With the increase in the adoption of tech, people have started ecommerce businesses that are disrupted by logistics.

Guarav shares that the journey at Pickrr has been an interesting one. In the pre-pandemic era, the startup was dealing with several brands but without any proper visibility. However, since the digitisation boom and with the disruption at Shopify, he says there was a scale in demand which raised expectations regarding supply as well. 

“At Pickrr, we faced completely new challenges, and every day became more and more interesting,” he adds. 

He explains that for a D2C brand, communication, checkout experience, packaging, return policy, etc are key components that contribute to forming the impression of the brand. Thus, Pickrr is helping by trying to disrupt the end customer eNPS of the D2C brands and thereby, solving problems related to the entire purchase experience. 

Adoption of technology

Gaurav mentions that there are many technologies involved in the checkout experience such as RTO analysis, customer profiling, etc, which could be made smoother using data science, AI and ML, data models, data science intelligence, etc.

“Infrastructure is already there in India and it is evolving. The main thing is technology adoption of the infrastructure, which will play a very key role,” he says. Several companies have started using drones, robotics, and other innovative technologies that will contribute to enhancing the customer experience.

Pickrr deals with three kinds of customers: emerging D2C brands that deal with 400-500 monthly orders, validated D2C brands with 4,000-5,000 monthly orders, and others who deal with more than 5,000 monthly orders. The company helps these brands grow using different kinds of supply chain products and automation, thereby making them stay.

“They see the value of Pickrr and this is why Pickrr exists in a very competitive market,” says Gaurav. 

Building a logistics company

In India, there is a wide range of logistic partners to choose from and at Pickrr, the choice lies with the sellers as well as with Pickrr’s internal data science model. He shares that the logistic partners are profiled based on the needs of the seller and the eligibility. “You have to be clear on what exactly is your need, and you should get exposed to almost every flavour in the logistic industry,” he says. 

Pickrr is focusing on warehousing by evolving its models. The company is also trying to build a complete checkout product for ecommerce sites. The key areas where Pickrr would be focusing on is hiring talented people to their team, investing towards inorganic growth, and completely formulating the roadmap. Pickrr will also be heavily investing in data science, technology and products. “For anyone who is thinking of building an ecommerce platform, Pickrr should be the complete one-stop solution for them,” he says. 

Pickrr is gearing up for the festive season as well. However, the emerging small D2C brands are at risk of getting neglected, thus Pickrr is trying to solve the issues of these brands and help them, shares Gaurav. He adds that the key challenges that the company has been trying to solve are how they can reduce their dependence on the supply chain in the long term, how they can help the regional players in the industry, and how they can stay ahead in the game. 

“Once the customer is deeply integrated and if you can drive the decision-making of the customer, then you can achieve the stickiness and you can grow irrespective of two or three players popping every day,” he says. 

Gaurav concludes by saying that the concept of using drones for logistics is still in its infancy. Drones need to be ethically used for the right purpose. Additionally, the industry of electric vehicles is also emerging, which will add to a lot of disruption. “Eventually, we will have to move towards a safer and cleaner way of steering up logistics on the operation side,” he says.

Brands of India is a YourStory initiative to catalyse the growth of India's D2C economy. It will bring together D2C ecosystem stakeholders, including brand builders, D2C startups, investors, corporates, and policymakers, to discover, build and help daring entrepreneurs create an additional 500 Brands of India in the next three years.

To know more about this initiative and the D2C ecosystem, visit brandsofindia.yourstory.com.