The rise of same-day delivery in Southeast Asia

A sales executive in Jakarta braves the morning rush hour and arrives at the office, preparing for a long day of meetings. Then he discovers that he’s left his laptop adapter at home.

No one at the office has a spare, so he whips out his phone and buys one on Tokopedia. It arrives within two hours.

A shopper in Malaysia has finally saved up enough money for her dream smartphone. She buys it online in the morning, and when she gets home in the evening, the package is already there.

These scenarios wouldn’t have been possible years ago, but they have become commonplace as same-day ecommerce delivery matures across Southeast Asia.

While this may not be the norm and will likely remain niche for the foreseeable future, its growth has been astronomical.

Enter Gojek and Grab

A lot of same-day deliveries are done point to point. This typically involves one driver picking up a parcel straight from the seller and then bringing it directly to the buyer. They’re often used for deliveries that take place within one to three hours from the time an item is purchased.

These tend to be consumer-to-consumer transactions, where the buyer and seller are located in the same city or metropolis.

Firas Alsuwaigh, chief of strategy at Ninja Van, says that most same-day requests typically involve smaller items and higher-value purchases like electronics, where the cost of logistics is much smaller than the product price.

As these requests tend to be urgent, they’re fulfilled by on-demand service providers, such as ride-hailers like Grab and Gojek. Indonesia-based Tokopedia, for example, has been working with those two companies since 2017 to offer same-day delivery.

Through its GoSend business, Gojek offers instant and same-day delivery in Indonesia for both business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer orders. Instant delivery is available in 74 areas across the country, while same-day service – which costs less but takes longer – is focused on the greater city of Jakarta.

While its rates for same-day delivery vary depending on distance and location, GoSend typically charges 7,000 rupiah to 12,000 rupiah (roughly US$0.50 to US$0.86) per delivery.

Grab has also seen sufficient demand to ramp up same-day delivery support for social commerce sellers in Indonesia.

“There has been a big paradigm shift in consumer preference in Indonesia. We also found that buyers increasingly prefer an option for immediate delivery if the price is right,” observes Adelene Foo, head of GrabExpress.

Same-day delivery at scale

Limitations of same-day delivery