Last-mile delivery is the final stretch of a delivery, from a depot in your city to your door. It is the most expensive part of delivery, and the only part that you see. In India, it is run by courier networks, delivery apps and the software that they use.
Why is the last mile so costly? A truck carries thousands of parcels between two cities in one trip. But in the last mile, a rider on a scooter carries 30 or 40 parcels, each to a different address, and must find each one. Some customers are not at home. And many Indian shoppers choose cash on delivery, paying the rider at the door. If the customer refuses the parcel, it goes back to the seller, and the seller pays for shipping both ways. This return is called RTO, return to origin, as the page on cash on delivery and RTO explains.
The software does five jobs. Shipping software chooses the courier company for each parcel, prints the label and books the pickup. It also handles parcels sent abroad. Route optimisation software plans each rider's stops in the best order. Delivery failure prediction warns which parcels are likely to fail, so that the seller can act before they are sent. And reverse logistics handles the goods that come back: it grades them, repairs what it can and sells them again.
Then there are the networks that do the moving. An express courier network carries a parcel across the country in a few days, through its own sorting centres and trucks. E-commerce fulfilment stores a brand's stock in shared warehouses, and packs and sends its orders. Delivery as a service lets a shop or restaurant book riders from another company's network. Cold-chain logistics keeps food and medicine cold all the way. And packers and movers shift a whole household to a new city.
Two changes are now reshaping the last mile. The first is distance. A dark store, a small warehouse inside a neighbourhood that no customer enters, lets quick commerce apps deliver groceries in ten minutes. The second is the vehicle: more and more delivery riders now use electric scooters. The decisions are changing too. AI models now choose the courier and the order of the stops, and change them during the day, as the page on physical AI describes.