e_Paper 27-11-2016

18
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2016
DT
Feature
GObd goes all in with logistics platform ‘Go! FETCH’
• SD Asia Desk
Adnan, an ambitious entrepreneur,
has set up a Facebook store in
order to sell mobile handsets and
headphones – but he doesn’t have
the capital resources to put in
place his own delivery system.
Shaila, not wanting to get yelled
at by her boss, has rushed through
Dhaka’s awful traffic to get to her
office on time– but, she missed out
on her critical morning coffee.
Hridoy, the e-commerce
manager for his company’s
retail operation, has tried time
and time again to find an ideal
logistics partner – but his partners
are inexperienced and lack the
technology needed to do business
at the speed and volume that the
Bangladeshi consumer demands.
GObd’s Logistics Platform
GO! Fetch can solve all of three’s
problems. GObd’s GO! Fetch
(FETCH) platform has been solving
these types of problems over
the past year. GObd, founded in
2014, is an organisation made up
of individuals who passionately
believe that technology and data
are the keys to creating efficiencies
in logistics for Bangladesh.
Beginning of GO FETCH:
Inspired by the lack of real,
data-driven logistics providers
in Bangladesh and his own poor
experience ordering online,
GObd’s Co-Founder and CTO
Swagata Prateek has led the
building of FETCH as a robust
operational service driven by
technology. All the various
technology pieces have been
built from the ground up and
designed to meet customer’s
requirements. “We specifically
incorporated active tracking and
custom-designed algorithms to
create a highly efficient service,”
said Prateek. In many cases,
FETCH business partners require
small tweaks to their management
dashboards. “Given that we
manage our own technical team
and manage every technical piece
ourselves, we are able to provide a
significant level of customization
for our business clients,” said
Tareq Aziz, Software Engineer at
GObd.
“With the large expansion of
both traditional E-commerce
and Facebook commerce in
Bangladesh, logistics has become
a huge challenge for our partners.
We work to ensure a high-quality
customer experience, every
time and consider ourselves
an extension of our partner’s
business,” said Farhan Rahman,
Co-Founder, and COO of GObd.
“For anyone who is building their
e-commerce presence and requires
an experienced, reliable logistics
platform, FETCH is the answer.”
Challenges at the
beginning:
Getting here was not that easy
for FETCH. It started piloting
their logistics service with the
support of friends and family. “We
approached friends and family
who had various businesses
and told them to take a chance
with us – we made it work”, said
Farhan. In order to pilot their
consumer-facing model, Farhan
proposed using a simple number
and chat line on Whatsapp. “We
decided that the easiest way to get
people to use our service was to
remove any hassle – many people
in Bangladesh are already using
Whatsapp and this proved to be
an easy way for us to gauge the
market’, added Farhan.
FETCH web app:
With the consumer model proven
out, the GObd team has been
working on a customer facing
front-end that will allow users
to order anything, on-demand.
FETCH web app – which includes
ordering options from restaurants,
grocery stores, electronics
stores, flower shops and much
more. They are keeping their
official launch date under wraps
at the moment, but you can
sign up to follow their progress
at fetch.gobd.co. The FETCH
platform now includes multiple
large enterprise customers and
currently offers varied services
(for consumers, on-demand — and
for businesses) including food,
time critical documents, gifts,
flowers, electronics, grocery,
laundry, e-commerce products
and much more. They offer a
better, differentiated service
with ETA & Delivery times which
helps improve the quality of
service offered to consumers and
businesses. “Our goal is to provide
anything and everything, ondemand
for consumers — and in
support of our business partners,”
stated Qasim Rana, Co-Founder
and CEO of GObd. “We work
across the spectrum with some of
the largest e-commerce players in
Bangladesh – to the small corner
store on your street – and our
single most important focus is
customer experience. Logistics
is a tough business and requires
efficient spending in order to
achieve scale. We are going to use
the resources we have, channel
our spending and really center our
business at the core. Other players
are still trying to figure out who
they are, or, they have burned
money after money with little
growth to show for it,” said Qasim.
FETCH and competitors:
FETCH is not the only player
in the market. There are other
organizations in both the B2B and
B2C space including E-Courier,
Pathao, FoodPanda, HungryNaki,
GoGoBangla and others. “We think
the market has been primed for
the services FETCH provides to
businesses and consumers. I think
there is room in the market for
different levels of players and we
plan to be on top. What makes us
different is our focus on customer
experience and a consistent drive
to complement smart operations
with sensible technology. The
short answer is that consumers
in Bangladesh deserve better
services, and we are here to
provide just that.”
It is certainly good for local
consumers who now have option
to choose from multiple delivery
services. While the business
requires large investment to truly
offer a great customer experience,
we believe that the battle will
be fought not on who has best
resources but how well these
teams deliver on their promises
to customers. The marriage of
technology and conventional
logistic business is extremely
challenging as order fulfilment
process happens through multiple
levels.
The trick will be the most
efficient use of capital to
achieve scale which is difficult
to implement in an inefficient
market like Bangladesh. In the
Indian market multiple delivery
companies have shut down
operations in past one year. These
companies played the valuation
game and took VC money. Along
with money came pressure from
these investors to turn profits or
to show user acquisition too fast.
However logistics firms operate
on wafer-thin margins and end up
losing money on every delivery,
according to industry experts.
Hopefully, our logistics startups
will learn from the mistakes made
by their peer group from other
markets and add real value to our
local businesses. The last mile
delivery solution in Bangladesh
is definitely going through some
interesting times without a clear
winner at sight, but only time will
tell if we are to have one, soon! •
Article published under
special arrangement with
SDAsia.com