Gen Z startup founders cater to unusual needs in small towns

In Itanagar, barbers are the most sought after in the lockdown, while in Sambalpur, birthday cakes are ordered the most online. Bhopal likes its pasta and, in Jabalpur, delivery staff wear QR codes taped to their chests to ease digital payments. While large, well-funded grocery players, such as BigBasket and Grofers, are busy in metros, small, local-delivery startups are catering to the somewhat unusual needs of people in Guwahati, Jabalpur, Itanagar and other smaller cities.

Serving Odisha’s Sambalpur and Jharsuguda districts, delivery startup Homevery has seen a surprisingly large demand for birthday cakes. “We have delivered at least 50 cakes during the lockdown. I guess people want to celebrate even in lockdown,” says Homevery co-founder Prahllad Mittal, 24. He adds that revenues have risen six times since the lockdown was announced.

Many of these local delivery apps were started after the lockdown by Gen-Z founders. They not only deliver essentials, but also offer services for barbers, electricians, plumbers and basic blood testing.

In Arunachal Pradesh, services delivery app MeeBuddy was rolled out in Itanagar and Tezu just as the lockdown was announced. It has seen a spike in demand for barbers since it introduced the service last week. District collectors have issued passes to a few barbers registered with the app, who visit the homes of clients.

Three days after the national lockdown came into effect on 25 March, Gaurav Bordoloi and his classmate Karan Agarwal, both 22, started an online service, HomeDrop, to deliver essentials to people in their hometown of Guwahati.

Bordoloi and Agarwal, both final-year IT engineering students at the National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, came home in March after college closed mid-semester. They take online orders, pick up what they need from Agarwal’s father’s grocery store, and deliver around the city. They plan to expand to Patna by tying up with an acquaintance. They’ve gone from 10 orders a day to 30, each with a ticket size of ₹900-1,500, in three weeks.

Some state governments have sought help from entrepreneurs to create apps. “There has been a surge in demand after the lockdown, especially since state governments encouraged people to use the app,” says MeeBuddy co-founder Rajasekhar Mallireddy, who also provides services in Vijayawada.

To streamline the demand for essentials in his area, Jabalpur district collector Bharat Yadav asked local IT startup Cinfy Systems to create an app. “We created the Jabalpur Mart app within six days and launched it on April 15,” says Bhopal-based Chandrakant Tiwari, 37, founder, Cinfy Systems.

For the first three days, most orders were duds as people just tested the app. “Now, we get nearly 500 orders a day,” he says. Most orders are for bread and milk, but there’s also a steady demand for pasta, which came as a surprise to Tiwari.

The startups have also had to ease people into digital transactions, as consumers in smaller cities prefer to deal in cash. Jabalpur Mart delivery personnel wear an ID card with a QR code taped to their chests, which customers can scan from a distance and make payments.

“We insist on online transactions to reduce contact. So we lose about 30% orders at the payment stage,” says Bordoloi of HomeDrop. “But people are getting used to it.”