The deliverymen behind India’s new class of shopaholics
ABDUL Saleem heaves a 55pound bag crammed with foot massagers, jeans, kitchen tools and sports shoes onto his shoulders. It’s late October, just days before the annual shopping frenzy that coincides with the Diwali festival of lights. As he does every morning six days a week, Saleem straps on a helmet, straddles his Honda scooter and accelerates onto Bangalore’s gridlocked streets.
Saleem delivers packages for Flipkart Online Services, India’s largest and most valuable e- commerce company. He and thousands of fellow deliverymen are foot soldiers in a hard-fought battle pitting Flipkart against domestic rival Snapdeal.com and US leviathan Amazon.com, all tussling for dominance in a market that Morgan Stanley expects to explode more than ten-fold to US$ 137 billion by 2020 from US$ 11 billion in 2013. Flipkart is clinging to a narrow lead as Amazon pours billions of dollars into India.
Online merchants world-wide, competing to deliver packages in a day or less, are keen to close the so- called last mile. In developed markets, purchases are typically delivered by truck, and there’s talk of using drones to get the job done. In the chaotic cities of India and other emerging markets, companies do whatever it takes to get packages to customers-by foot, bicycle, even boat.
For the most part they rely on people like Saleem, who has been weaving his scooter around Bangalore since closing a moneylosing scrap metal business two years ago. During the Diwali shopping rush, Flipkart’s army of 20,000 deliverymen carried as many as 800,000 packages a day. Without deliverymen risking their lives to get the products to the front door, sales growth at Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon would grind to a halt-much like Bangalore traffic.
Saleem’s title is Wishmaster - a nod to his dual role as a kind of deliveryman- customer rep. Saleem usually deals directly with shoppers because many belong to extended families where someone is almost invariably home.
Sometimes they’re happy to see him; other times they’re pacing impatiently outside, awaiting their retail fix.
Bangaloreans and other urban Indians have become just as addicted to online shopping as their counterparts in New York, London or Hong Kong and are known to order multiple times a day- even if it’s a 250-rupee ( RM15.50) kitchen knife they could buy easily from a local shop. “Who would want to brave the rush at the market when everything comes to the door?” Saleem asks.
At 6am on this sun- drenched last Wednesday, Saleem is standing amid thousands of packages in neat rows in a teeming distribution centre in the upscale JP Nagar residential neighbourhood. On the walls are posters forbidding Wishmasters from sporting gelled hair, ripped jeans, open-toed footwear, moustaches that cover the upper lip and more than two rings on their fingers. Those who violate the code get a warning and a grooming kit. Wearing a orangetrimmed blue company shirt with blue jeans, Saleem at 33 is the second- oldest deliveryman at the centre.
The assembled Wishmasters huddle, their manager recapping a zero-tolerance policy on misbehaving with women, talking rudely to customers and stealing goods or cash; reports of deliverymen dropping off bricks instead of iPhones and assaulting ladies home alone have cast a pall over the industry.
Then the manager entreats them to drive safely. The 59 mengoing door-to- door is considered unsafe for women-throw back tiny cups of sweet milky coffee from a steel dispenser near a sign that reads “Do not Spit” and
This customer gets several packages daily from Jabong. She returns many of them, too. Abdul Saleem, delivery man
hit the road.
Saleem has 36 packages, a relatively easy day. His first stop is a two- storey home on a quiet lane where the man of the house is dusting a Volkswagen at the gate. He’s a pediatrician and the package is for his daughter, a 26year- old software engineer with IT outsourcer Infosys.
“This customer gets several packages daily from Jabong,” says Saleem, referring to Flipkart’s fashion store. “She returns many of them, too.”
Saleem knows the buying habits of people on his customary routes as well as Flipkart’s algorithms and bots. “This customer bought a smartphone three months ago and it looks like he has just bought another one,” he says at his next halt.
For many young men who migrate from villages into the big cities, whizzing around on a motorcycle with an ID card lanyard is coveted bluecollar work. “It’s a fixed income and comes at the end of every month,” said Saleem, who earns 13,800 rupees ( just over US$ 200), a median salary for a coveted job that pays about as well as working at one India’s many call centres.
Flipkart and its rivals, already spending heavily on discounts and setting up warehousing and payments infrastructure, are also being forced to pay up for experienced deliverymen.
It’s unexpectedly hard to find people with a smattering of English (a common denominator in a nation with dozens of local languages) and a drivers license who can use phone navigation and process credit- card payments. Poaching from pizza chains and courier companies is rampant, says Vir Kashyap, co-founder and chief operating officer at Babajob, India’s largest blue- collar job website. Companies were forced to raise wages for delivery personnel 15 per cent last year. Online retailers are willing to boost pay because they understand that employees like Saleem are “their only touch point with the customer,” he says. “They are taking these roles very seriously.” It’s dangerous work in a nation where more than 146,000 people were killed in road crashes last year. Deliverymen brave rain and sweltering heat, breathing polluted air as they dodge erratic drivers, potholes, vending carts, street dogs and the occasional stray cow - all while carrying loads the size of a small refrigerator.
Today, Saleem’s scooter drives into streets too narrow for a car to enter. As three-wheel autorickshaws and recklessly piloted buses roar past, he leans on his horn every few seconds.
Just days earlier, a new deliveryman was knocked off his motorcycle. Saleem, who says he maintains a sedate 25 mph, has had several close calls. ( He pays for his own insurance.)
Many recruits quit while being trained, said Girish Jetty, a trainer at the JP Nagar centre. — WP-Bloomberg