We expect India EVolve to give simple, scalable solutions for last mile delivery challenges: Experts

We expect India EVolve to give simple, scalable solutions for last mile delivery challenges: Experts

Compulsory attendance was why Alisha Sinha, final year triple major student of Christ University, Bengaluru, attended the India Evolve ideathon session held in her college on April 8. Once there though, Sinha, pulled in by the urgency of the topic – the need to tackle the ever increasing carbon footprint in the last mile delivery sector – was only happy to put in her two pennies worth.

The session was held in association with the Sustainable Mobility Network, an informal collective of 30-plus organisations working on sustainable mobility and transport decarbonisation in India. The collective’s India EVolve Innovation Challenge will present students across the country an opportunity to shape sustainable transportation’s future.

“Five students from my class were asked to participate in the ideathon compulsorily and it was my turn to go for such events,” said Sinha, who is majoring in Economics, Mathematics and Statistics.

As it turned out, the reluctant participant, together with her classmates – Aniket Roy (21), Vaishnavi (20), Anuvind Maniyot (20) and Venkatachalam Subramania Periya Subbu (20) – came up with the winning idea of the evening. The team’s solution envisioned AI-assisted real time deliveries from hubs of groceries and eateries.

When India EVolve Challenge was proposed to engage the youngsters, simple but scalable ideas were what the team of experts were pushing for, said Siddharth Sreenivas, head, transport and mobility at Association for Scientific and Academic Research (ASAR), which is also part of the Sustainable Mobility Network.

“Besides ideas that build on common sense and can be scaled up, we were hoping to create a buzz about the last mile delivery challenge among the youngsters, who are in fact the drivers of the demand in this sector,” added Sreenivas. At Christ University, Sinha’s group was not the only one to think of creating nodal points where there is demand. Post graduate student Anusha Popli and her team, most of whom attended the event organised by the sustainable development cell of their college for the first time, also suggested dividing cities into pockets and establishing one to three warehouses in these pockets based on the demand to reduce carbon footprint. “When we were brainstorming for ideas, we decided to build on our experiences with Swiggy Instamart since all of us were ordering a lot from it. Many times, I used to feel guilty that what I ordered involved movement of goods from different parts of the city, often delivered by many persons. So we assumed the role of Swiggy executives and suggested what we thought would be an ideal situation,” said Popli.

“Our foundation proposed the idea last year. The Indian e-commerce market is expected to grow 10 times from the current level of 4 billion parcels delivered per year to 40 billion parcels by 2030. So there is a need to come up with zero emission deliveries. Our foundation often works with youngsters and knows that when nudged in the right direction, they come up with workable ideas that enhance resilience against climate challenges,” said Sanju Soman, chief executive officer of Kerala-based Sustera Foundation.

Nonetheless, the Sustainable Mobility Network team did a pilot run in Kerala. “We tested out our idea in seven colleges in Kerala. We basically wanted to know if the idea will engage students and how much they can contribute in terms of addressing the challenges,” said Sreenivas.

But while interacting with students from colleges in Kerala, Sreenivas said the team was quite taken aback by the depth of awareness of youngsters about the issues in last mile delivery and how ready they were to contribute what they can towards zero emission deliveries.

“Some had difficulty in grasping governance and financial models, but as a rule they applied common sense when looking for solutions,” said Sreenivas.

At Christ University, before letting them brainstorm over their ideas, the five participating teams were taken through the requirements for the competition and were also told to explore best practices from around the world.

“While reviewing best practices, we hit upon the idea of carbon credit trading that is already prevalent in Canada and Europe. We decided to tweak that to suit our Indian market,” said Rishabh Rao, second year BCom student.

In a span of 15 minutes, his team even designed a prototype for an app.

“We lost out this time because I guess we were a bit ambitious in proposing a regulatory action without really understanding the intricacies involved. For one, we made carbon trading mandatory for companies. But the judges told us later that chances of this being a success is more if we develop a voluntary system. I think I want to go ahead with this idea for the final challenge, but of course do more research to bridge the knowledge gap,” added Rao.

The challenge is also open to young entrepreneurs – it is open to those in the age group of 18 to 38 years old. There are also webinars and various reports on the topic made available at the India EVolve website. An expert panel will review the applications, which can be submitted till May 12, and will choose 20 best ideas.

“Those who proposed the winning 20 pitches can then attend a bootcamp with experts to fine tune their ideas and submit them again. From these 20, the top seven solutions will be rewarded. There’s a substantial incentive with a prize money corpus of Rs 4.5 lakh,” said Sreenivas.