Shan Kadavil, Co-Founder, FreshtoHome

The online meat ordering and delivery market in India has been growing in leaps and bounds over the last few years, with the coronavirus pandemic giving the startups in the segment a major boost. D2C meat and seafood startup FreshToHome, which completed its last fundraising at the end of 2019 — the largest Series C fund-raise in Indian food tech — and is purportedly eyeing a Series D funding round at a post-money valuation of over $1 billion, has become rather aggressive in its expansion and communication drive in recent months. Shan Kadavil, co-founder, spoke to Alokananda Chakraborty about its recent moves.

E-commerce players, especially those in the food business, are in a race to deliver orders as quickly as possible. You already have a 90-minute delivery option; can you go any faster? What sort of capabilities do you need to shorten the delivery window?

We work with our partners to deliver in under 90 minutes, and 60 minutes in some regions, which we are certain is the optimal time to deliver with customer convenience and the safety of our delivery executives in mind. We are working on bringing down the 90-minute option to 60 minutes, and in the next 12 months, we target to reach this in all regions. However, we will not be participants in the 10-minute or 15-minute race game. Furthermore, the use of technology has been game-changing for us for demand planning in geographies, routes, and ETA (estimated time of arrival) of orders.

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