Delivery as a service is a service through which a business with no riders of its own books another company's riders, vans or partner fleets to deliver its orders, on the same day or within the hour. The business pays for each delivery. It is also called on-demand delivery. Often the delivery carries the shop's own name, not the delivery company's, and this is called white-label delivery.
Many businesses need fast delivery but cannot keep their own riders. A bakery may get 20 orders on a normal day and 200 on Valentine's Day. A pharmacy may need a rider three times an hour in the evening and never at night. Riders of its own would stand idle for much of the day. A delivery company can keep its riders busy, because it combines the orders of many businesses in the same area.
Consider a chain of six bakeries in Ahmedabad that takes cake orders on its own website. When a cake is ready, the bakery's order management system (OMS) sends a request to the delivery service, with the pickup address, the drop address and the time by which the cake must arrive. The service's software finds the nearest free rider, on an electric scooter, and quotes ₹65 for the 6-kilometre trip. The bakery's system accepts the quote. The rider arrives in 12 minutes, collects the cake and delivers it 25 minutes later. The customer follows the rider's location through a link in an SMS that carries the bakery's name. At the end of the month, the service bills the bakery for all its deliveries.
The riders come from different places. Some delivery services run their own fleets. Some are food delivery or ride-hailing apps that sell their riders' spare time to other businesses. Others use partner fleets: vans and bikes that belong to smaller transport companies, which the service books through its software. The service plans its riders' stops with route optimisation software, and follows its vehicles with a fleet management system.
Many of these fleets are now electric, because a scooter that runs all day costs much less to charge than to fill with petrol. The fleet operator then needs EV charging management software to charge the scooters, or swap their batteries, between shifts.
How is delivery as a service different from an express courier network? A courier carries a parcel between cities over a few days, through sorting centres. Delivery as a service carries one order across one city, directly from the shop to the customer, usually within an hour. Its closest neighbour is intra-city logistics, which sends a mini-truck or van for larger loads.