How Pidge Is Building The OS For India's Instant Delivery Economy
Quick commerce has made shopping faster than ever. With just a few taps, you can get anything from groceries to electronics delivered to your doorstep in minutes. It has rapidly grown into a $6.1 Bn market in India and is projected to reach $40 Bn by 2030. In comparison, traditional ecommerce, first popularised in the US, is expected to cross $400 Bn in India by the same time.
But what powers this symphony? What makes such impossible speed possible who delivers, what integrates, and how does it all come together?
The answer lies in logistics. Yet, is the system beginning to break?
Look closely, and you’ll notice some gaps in the orchestration.
India is the only market where quick commerce is scaling nationwide, reaching millions across diverse demographics and regions—a feat unmatched anywhere else. But supply is struggling to keep up with the speed.
Fast delivery isn’t a luxury anymore, it’s a basic expectation. While consumers expect delivery in minutes, more than 70% of the country’s delivery capacity remains offline,fragmented, and perhaps often beyond the control of the very platforms that make promises of lightning-fast delivery.
This is where Pidge steps in, addressing three core challenges that hinder both ecommerce and quick commerce as they scale.
First, the fragmentation crisis. Over 85% of fleet owners operate fewer than 20 trucks,mostly smaller vehicles that can’t match global capacity standards. This translates directly to lost sales opportunities, with businesses unable to fulfil demand surges during peak seasons.
Second, the silo syndrome. Even established players operate as islands – closed systems with virtually no interoperability. These communication barriers lead to missed delivery SLAs, causing frustrated customers and damaged brand reputations.
Finally, the digital divide. While 80% of Indians have smartphones, less than 5% of logistics providers use digital solutions. This digital poverty results in skyrocketing customer escalations, as businesses can’t provide accurate tracking or delivery estimates when problems inevitably arise.
“In a country with over 10 Mn merchants and rising demand for instant delivery, India’s logistics still run on paper, messaging and phone calls that don’t connect. This results in missed deliveries and zero visibility,” said Ratnesh Verma, founder and CEO of Pidge.
Pidge – the only interoperable delivery platform in India – offers a unified solution that digitises logistics operations end-to-end. It seamlessly integrates unorganised fleets with established logistics providers through both first-party logistics (1PL) and third-party logistics (3PL), bringing real-time tracking and management to the entire delivery process.
With accessibility in 10 local languages, the platform makes digital logistics inclusive – bringing advanced delivery capabilities to everyone, from neighborhood shops to large enterprises.
By focusing on integration and operational visibility, Pidge works to bridge the gap between rising consumer expectations and the fragmented systems driving most last-mile deliveries in India.
Digitised logistics unlock far greater efficiency than traditional, undigitised operations. Yet most SaaS platforms in this space are designed either for 1PL providers or optimised mainly for aggregators.
Pidge takes a different approach here. As Verma put it, “It’s about giving every business, big or small, the tool to grow with control, visibility, and confidence.”
With Pidge’s enterprise-grade SaaS platform, retailers can independently handle every step from receiving and allocating orders to live tracking, fulfillment, and customer experience – all in real time through a mobile app.
Its enterprise-grade SaaS solution leaves power in the hands of the retailer – from incoming order to allocation, live tracking to order fulfillment, and overseeing the customer experience – everything is managed in real time through a mobile app.
Pidge relies on a suite of proprietary tools that solve what modern businesses struggle with: cost, fill rate and delivery promises.
Pidge’s Titan AI acts as an expert air traffic controller – constantly monitoring the skies, directing each plane to the perfect runway at precisely the right moment. Similarly, Titan AI directs orders to the optimal delivery partners in real-time, preventing costly delays and maximising resource utilisation.
Meanwhile, its Multiple Output Route Recommendation Engine (MORRE) functions like a delivery carpooling system. Just as carpooling reduces traffic by combining multiple people’s journeys, MORRE intelligently bundles deliveries along similar routes – slashing fuel costs, cutting delivery times, and ensuring more packages reach their destinations on schedule.
The platform is equipped with fraud checks, cash-on-delivery management, tailored handling of failed deliveries, and prompt status updates. The result is higher on-time delivery rates, reduced cost per order and fewer missed deadlines for its clients, claimed the founder.
Pidge has built its software with SOC 2, ISO, GDPR and DPDP compliance to ensure data protection.
Whether it’s a D2C brand in a metro city or a local retailer in a Tier II or III town, Pidge enables businesses to grow revenue by building in-house delivery networks or integrating 3PLs, reduce costs with AI-powered routing, clubbing and reallocation and strengthen loyalty by owning the final customer touchpoint.
“Everyone uses UPI, everyone uses Pidge,” Verma said.
The proof is in the results. Minus Thirty, one of Pidge’s clients, transformed its delivery operations using its AI routing, live tracking, 3PL support and rider management. Minus Thirty saw a 25% reduction in delivery costs and a 10-fold increase in customer satisfaction.
Today, Pidge serves over 15,000 businesses and partners with more than 500 logistics players. The platform supports white-label solutions for brand customisation and claims a 30% growth in business and a 47% increase in customers for its clients.
“Our goal isn’t just to digitise logistics. It’s to build the OS that powers India’s $400 Bn ecommerce future,” Verma puts forth.
How Pidge Helps Brands Win At Customer ExperiencePidge serves clients across a diverse spectrum.
Take WOW! Momo, for instance. After adopting Pidge in the WOW! Eats vertical, its delivery performance jumped from 80% to 90% and then to 95% on improved customer satisfaction. It also enabled them to handle higher-order volumes.
Online clothing brand NewMe faced its own challenge as unpredictable delivery timelines were chipping away customer trust. After they signed up Pidge, the delivery success rate shot up from below-60% to 95%. Faster, more reliable deliveries translated into improved brand perception and customer trust. Pidge simplified their logistics across cities, everything from tracking to escalations now runs through a single window
Even in sectors where speed and precision are a make-or-break, Pidge claims to be making a difference. Healthtech unicorn Tata 1mg had been struggling with their quick commerce segment, especially around managing local vendor coordination and closing service gaps. Pidge helped it streamline operations, reduce dependence on multiple local vendors, and gain access to shipment tracking. This improved the company’s quick commerce operations, making them smoother by addressing serviceability and allocation.
On the supply side, companies such as Rapydex had run into troubles with tracking orders, managing cash on delivery reconciliations and routing deliveries. Pidge helped them gain real-time visibility into rider movements, optimise routes to reduce both delivery times and fuel costs, speed up onboarding of new riders and prepare additional manpower ahead of peak seasons. These efforts resulted in smoother operations and increased client satisfaction.
For Qwqer, a Bengaluru-based delivery company, the challenges were volume instability and inconsistency in demand which made it tough to schedule riders or plan a stable workforce. With Pidge, the order volumes gradually became uniform across the day and month, making it easier to keep the riders busy and manage lean periods with ease. The company reported an improved demand pattern across cities, including Bengaluru.
Porter, a logistics and transportation major, faced issues such as rider churn, zonal-level rider density and ups and downs of hourly or seasonal demand that impacted scalability. Pidge’s platform helped them crack these issues by stabilising the workforce and enhancing scalability..
Such case studies highlight how Pidge addresses complex delivery challenges, improves operational efficiency and customer satisfaction across industries and business models.
Delivery expectations are on the rise. What started with 90-minute delivery of groceries, has now evolved into a 10-minute format for almost anything – from food products to fashion and electronic devices to home décor ensembles – and set the rapidly evolving quick commerce turf simmering.
The wave of change has hit the ecommerce and direct-to-home (D2C) spheres too, sending players to recast their business models, expand their reach, and firm up back-end logistics.
As online commerce grows, the demand for speed and reliability becomes universal, driven by both consumer expectation and competition. At a time when about 60% of Indian shoppers expect same-day deliveries and 30% want their orders within two hours, it’s clear that businesses cannot thrive without smarter support to integrate and harmonise the entire system.
With speed coming up as the key to being in sync with the changing dynamics, platforms like Pidge have become essential to support the backbone of ecommerce and quick commerce, ensuring that the convenience consumers have come to expect is met. Just as UPI democratised digital payments for a billion Indians, Pidge is building the digital infrastructure for India’s instant delivery revolution.
The post How Pidge Is Building The OS For India’s Instant Delivery Economy appeared first on Inc42 Media.