How This Bengaluru-based Delivery Startup Roped in Top InvestorsMicrodelivery start-up DailyNinja Raises $3 Million Funding From Saama and Sequoia Capital

While several hyper-local delivery start-ups are failing due to delivery delays, Bengaluru'sDailyNinjaseems to have changed their existing operating pattern to compete with the industry giants.

Recently, the microdelivery start-up DailyNinja raised $3 Million funding from Saama Capital and its existing investor Sequoia Capital too participated in the round.

Entrepreneur India takes a look at how the micro-delivery startup has made it big in their segment.

Sweet Beginnings

To make life easy for himself,Sagar Yarnalkar, Co-Founder, DailyNinja, often asked his milkman to fetch groceries while coming to deliver milk. Eventually, he thought of building a business model around it. He got together with Anurag Gupta and hired a few vendors to deliver milk and groceries at the doorstep. But the model did not work out. "Firstly, the newly hired vendors were not well acquainted with the locality, so it took them a long time to find the houses. Moreover, many of them were working part-time and some didn't turn up for deliveries. The entire management system was completely chaotic," says Yarnalkar.

Overcoming Challenges

So instead of scrapping the business plan, he thought of refining the existing model. They contacted local milkmen and convinced them to come onboard with their existing customer base. Slowly, they managed to tie-up with 300 local milk-vendors across the city. "Initially, convincing them was a tedious job. We met them daily and listened to their woes. Slowly, we were able to build the trust factor, which has helped us to sustain the network even today," says Yarnalkar. Secondly, as they grew bigger it became difficult for the vendors to keep track of the orders. So, the founders devised DailyNinja app and asked the milkmen to convince their customers to put their orders on the app. This helped the vendors to track the exact amount of milk and groceries that need to be fetched, carried and delivered.

Turnaround

"Changing the course of the delivery medium got us the required attention and enough customer base," says Yarnalkar. Till date, they have not spent a dime on marketing or advertising. DailyNinja became popular through word-of-mouth, mostly because of the vendors.

Also, people are finding it extremely convenient to operate through the app compared to the conventional method of using prepaid coupons. Gearing up with an annual revenue of Rs 60 crore and receiving seven lakh orders per month, this 2015 brand is further planning to expand to Hyderabad and Mumbai.