With India now unlocking in a phased manner, Shiprocket has noted a 65% increase in active shippers. In its ‘Unlock 1.0 post-lockdown Analysis of Logistics’ report, India’s leading tech-enabled logistics aggregator for D2C sellers found that 15% of sellers activated post-lockdown were essential sellers.
Saahil Goel, Founder and CEO of Shiprocket, said the 3-month lockdown created a significant disruption in the supply chain. He said the demand to supply ratio was not balanced with the demand increasing exponentially. Goel explained Shiprocket’s report was based on the patterns and trends observed.
“Unlock 1.0 has paved the way for a new phase of logistics operations in India,” he said. “The government has eased restrictions on several aspects of logistics and e-commerce, and we look forward to continuing our services in the unlock phase 1 without hindrances in the supply chain and shipping.”
Shiprocket revealed the shipment volume for essential products was nearly three times higher, with over 40% of overall volume coming from essential categories when compared to the lockdown period. India’s largest e-commerce shipping and enablement platform for SMBs highlighted an interesting insight into the seller’s future mode of business. “When surveyed, 60% of sellers admitted that a blend of both offline and online as demand channels would continue to be the preferred demand channels, while less than 2% of sellers were not sure how the new normal would look like for them,” it said.
The report said Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore recorded the highest number of pickups and deliveries. This depicts the pent-up demand that was there in these cities during the lockdown. Moreover, sellers in these cities were able to overcome challenges more quickly in becoming operational. “While Delhi leads the pickup activities with 26.44% shipments, Mumbai was the top city in terms of delivery with 7.58% shipments,” the report said. “The average delivery time intracity, intrastate, and the interstate was 1.30 days, 2.20 days and 3.8 days, respectively.”
According to Shiprocket, medicines and groceries were the most shipped items during the lockdown period. And post-lockdown, health and beauty retail (32%), fashion apparel (28%) and electronics, automobile and accessories (18%) were the top three categories in terms of shipment in the Unlock 1 phase.
Overall, COVID-19 impacted the business of 90% of respondents.
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