Pickup Service joins forces with DTDC subsidiary to enter Indian market

Bangalore: French parcel pickup and delivery firm Pickup Service, a unit of logistics firm GeoPost (Le Groupe La Poste), plans to enter the Indian market with DotZot, a unit of courier firm DTDC Express Ltd, to provide last-mile delivery services for e-commerce.

The partnership aims to ensure that by the end of 2016, 90% of the population of major e-commerce consumption centers are within 15 minutes of DTDC pickup points. DTDC has a majority stake in DotZot, while GeoPost, the parent company of Pickup Services, has a 40% stake in DTDC.

The two companies will help set up PUDO (pick-up and delivery) hubs that will allow online shoppers to pick up their orders from offline hubs conveniently located around their homes and offices. The services will initially launch in 15 cities in 2015 and expand to 125 cities with 6,000 pickup points by the end of 2016.

According to DotZot, for everyone ₹ 100 spent on online sales, ₹ 35 is spent on support services such as warehousing, payment gateways, and logistics, among others. For every purchase ₹ 100, online sellers suffer a loss of ₹ 24 for books, ₹ 13 on mobile phones and ₹ 8 for clothing.

DotZot said PUDOs can save up to 15% on last-mile delivery. DotZot delivers about 40,000 packages a day, while DTDC delivers about 500,000 packages a day, according to Sanjiv Kathuria, CEO and co-founder of DotZot.

Earlier in October, courier firm Blue Dart Express Ltd launched a storage service for parcels purchased online at its Cyber ​​Park in Gurgaon, as e-commerce saw a rise in failed parcel deliveries.

Diego Magdelenat, co-founder and CEO of Pickup Service, said he has more than 24,000 PUDOs in Europe. Regarding locker services, he said there are only 150 lockers in France because this system is only possible in regions with a large number of parcels.

“We don’t believe in the idea of ​​parcel lockers as they don’t fully cover a country like India,” he said, adding that his company will leverage DTDC’s extensive network.

According to a May 2015 study by investment bank Goldman Sachs, logistics and delivery have become one of the largest segments of the e-commerce industry. By 2030, their sales will increase from the current $20 billion to $300 billion.

Indian e-commerce companies such as Jabong (Global Fashion Group) and Amazon.in have been experimenting with the concept of parcel pickup at local grocery stores and petrol stations to increase convenience and reduce last-mile delivery costs.