With more than 2 lakh two-wheelers registered in the city in 2019, the e-commerce industry will soon face a challenge of on-time delivery to its customers.
By Nikita Arora
E-commerce industry which is expected to create approximately a million jobs by 2022, is expected to encounter difficulties due to increasing congestion on the roads of Bengaluru.
Bangalore based e-commerce companies that follow the hyper-local and food delivery model have around 5000-6000 delivery partners from each company on the road every day in Bangalore, as per statistics of Regional Transport Office, Bangalore. According to job portal websites, there are more than 1000 job openings for delivery agents in Bangalore.
In order to deal with this increasing upsurge in vehicular population in the city, the construction of roads was initiated in different parts of the city such as Eijupura, Kadugodi, Bannerghatta, etc. However, the problem of congestion still remains unsolved.
Parichya Gautam, 30, who commutes from Indiranagar to HSR complains of an increasing number of delivery agents which is the cause of vehicular congestion. He said, “Day by day there is an increase in the number of delivery boys. The roads are crammed with delivery agents during peak hours, which causes traffic congestion.”
“People want their delivery order to reach them on time,” said Mr. Prashanth, Inspector of Indiranagar Traffic Police station. He added, “The companies, as well as the people, are responsible for this traffic congestion. The people fail to abide by the rules and then blame it on the police. We are constructing roads and mending the broken ones too. If everyone followed the traffic rules, probably this problem would never have arisen.”
E-commerce companies are now looking forward to experimenting with other delivery models to achieve their targets. Anisha Jain, a business analyst at a food delivery startup said, “We too are facing this problem of traffic congestion and to deal with this we are planning to introduce an option of delivery for short distances on cycles so as to deliver orders on time. Other than that, we are also experimenting with drone delivery system. However, that is difficult for heavy package delivery.”
Traffic expert, Shreenivas said, “The roads of the city are one of the major reasons why this issue of traffic congestion is arising. Also, the government should make it mandatory for all the e-commerce companies to look for other modes of delivery apart from bikes in order to reduce their carbon footprint. This is the only way a problem like this can be prevented.”
