Urban congestion to remote delivery Tackling India's logistics puzzle

The last mile is no longer just the final step in logistics but the frontier of innovation and efficiency in India. With emerging technologies like drones, Al-driven tools, and collaborations across the logistics spectrum, India is not only addressing its unique logistical challenges but setting the stage for a globally competitive, future-ready supply chain ecosystem.

- Libin Chacko Kurian

India has a population of 1.4 billion people living across 773 districts. The country has 65+ cities with more than one million inhabitants and the urban population is at 36 percent of the population. This makes India a very complex country with a diverse demography. “This scale is not even there in China,” said Aryaman Tandon, Managing Partner, Mobility, Energy and Transportation of Praxis Global Alliance, a management consulting firm. “Because in China the population is consolidated in key cities.”

“India has a very distributed ecosystem. Thus, logistics and the last mile become very critical. The density of population in Indian cities, the absence of road infrastructure, the unplanned, not very structured civic infrastructure and one of the largest retail networks in the world, makes it even more difficult,” he added.

He also pointed out that every brand in India could succeed only on the basis of distribution and it makes India a different economy compared to larger economies like the US or China.

“Only less than ten percent of India’s retail is organised despite a lot of e-commerce, quick commerce and modern trade. That makes the last mile and intracity movements extremely important in India’s distribution network,” he said.

Tandon identifies quick commerce as the latest disruptor in the market right now creating two-wheelers, three-wheelers, warehousing and lastmile logistics demands. As a result, he is predicting rapid electrification, technology adoption and cold chain penetration in the last mile in the next five years.

“We will see the emergence of a lot of digitally enabled, localised, last-mile electric fleet operators, some strong in particular categories” he added.