Dec. 14, 2015—India’s e-commerce market is growing at an incredibly quick pace and expected to be worth $100 billion by 2020. All online sellers, however, face a major hurdle: the country’s underdeveloped logistics infrastructure. A new startup called QikPod wants to help by building the world’s largest network of smart lockers, where shoppers can pick up packages, in Indian cities.
Founded by serial entrepreneur Ravi Gururaj, QikPod is still preparing to launch its pilot programs in January, but has already raised $9 million from Accel Partners, Flipkart (one of India’s largest e-commerce sites), logistics company Delhivery and Foxconn Mobile (the lockers will be built by Foxconn). One of Gururaj’s previous companies, VMLogix, was acquired by Citrix in 2010.
“I went to look at logistics and saw that the last few hundred meters in the logistics chain seems to involve a lot of friction,” Gururaj told TechCrunch. “You have to be at home to receive a package and leaving a package on a doorstep, which you can do in parts of Europe or America, doesn’t work in India because it will get pilfered.”
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