Three-Quarters Choose In-House Delivery

That level of in house delivery points to a market failure, not a lack of demand. Indian merchants were already generating online orders, but many could not trust hyperlocal apps for wider city coverage or national carriers for same day speed, so they hired riders, managed dispatch on WhatsApp or phone, and absorbed the operational mess to protect customer experience and keep control of repeat demand.

• The split in the market left a hole. Fast players like Dunzo style services worked in small radiuses, while larger networks like Delhivery and Blue Dart were built for broader supply chain movement. That made merchants choose between speed and reach, then patch the gap themselves.
  1 sacra
• Doing delivery in house was also about ownership of the customer. Marketplace channels charged high commissions, limited access to customer data, and controlled the last mile interaction, while brands cared about package condition, rider behavior, and whether the order arrived when promised.
  1 sacra
• The same pattern shows up elsewhere in Indian commerce infrastructure. Shiprocket grew by acting as a software layer over fragmented couriers for D2C merchants, helping sellers route shipments without building that capability themselves. The opening was created by unreliable last mile operations and merchant fragmentation.
  2 sacra

The next phase of this market is merchants handing delivery back to specialized networks, but only if those networks feel like owned infrastructure rather than a marketplace tax. The winners will combine dispatch software, flexible rider supply, and denser city networks so brands can keep control of the customer while shedding the cost of running delivery teams themselves.