Anchanto’s e-commerce dream: island-wide delivery under 99 minutes

E-commerce is a bogeyman for many retail stores. While big players like Walmart and Costco have the resources to invest heavily in e-commerce, the bulk of the retail landscape — consisting of smaller retail chains that eke out a small profit — have no such luxury.

Then there’s the problem of showrooming: Where consumers visit retail stores to compare prices, and then end up buying the item from a rival e-commerce store.

For frustrated retail companies, Singapore startup Anchanto has a solution. It has been working on Ship.li, a tool that takes the complexity out of e-commerce and lets shops go online while focusing on what they do best.

“Think of it as Amazon Sellers with the goal of 99 minutes delivery”, said Vaibhav Dabhade, co-founder of Anchanto. To be absolutely clear, Ship.li’s ambition is still something it’s working towards, and they would start by offering the service only to premium items such as branded handbags.

As a classic two-sided platform, Ship.li is envisoned as a massive online storefront selling anything from groceries to fashion items to electronics. It offers consumers the choice of either delivery to their doorstep or pick-up at the retail stores.

It is also a self-serve, free-to-list platform where brands get their own Ship.li webpage and receive an integrated tool to digitize their inventory. Think of it as a portal into Anchanto’s own logistics backbone.

The promise of 99 minutes delivery is unprecedented in Asia, which doesn’t exactly have the most e-commerce-friendly logistics companies.To make it possible, it has developed a logistical tracking system to monitor the status of its delivery fleet, orders, and inventory. It is even exploring the idea of crowdsourcing some of its deliveries by engaging delivery assistants who would be paid to move goods in their free time.

It’s an idea that Silicon Valley startup Instacart is perfecting, and it has in the process raised Series A funding of USD 8.5M from top venture capitalists.

“In the future, we could potentially bring delivery times under 60 minutes,” said Vaibhav.

But before it can work on speed, Anchanto needs to prove that it can sign up merchants in bundles and keep them on its system.

Anchanto’s off to a good start. It secured its first big customer, traditional Chinese medicine brand Eu Yan Sang, for FACO — a platform that, unlike Ship.ly, caters to the bigger international retailers. Currently, it is processing about 430 orders a month, and the startup will increase its capacity soon.

Ship.li is currently in closed beta, with 12 retailers and about 150 brands on board. Merchants will be charged on a per-order basis, while consumers will enjoy free same-day deliveries. The company aims to launch the platform to the public in early September.

Logistics is an obsession for Anchanto right now. “There’s no point doing e-commerce in Singapore if you don’t own the logistics,” said Vaibhav, an approach that sets it apart from eBay, Qoo10, or ShopAbout.