WareIQ: Making Indian e-commerce firms smart, nimble & efficient

WareIQ is a Y-Combinator backed e-commerce fulfillment and shipping company that allows online brands in India to offer next-day delivery. Or, to be more precise, “Amazon-like next day delivery for e-commerce companies in India,” says Harsh Vaidya, founder and CEO, WareIQ. The firm was founded in 2019 by Vaidya and Aayush Mattoo with a vision to offer next-day delivery to all pincodes in India in the next three years.

While consumer expectations are changing radically in India, 80% of e-commerce parcels outside Amazon still take 5-15 days to reach customers. With growing consumer expectations of instant gratification and next-day delivery, the industry needs an ally to help them meet these expectations, says Vaidya. “This is the space WareIQ is filling in with its fulfillment network and technology platform,” he says. The company’s full-stack approach enables brands to centralise their operations on a single platform for end-to-end fulfilment, last-mile tracking, COD, and returns management along with a digital command centre for running, monitoring, and analysing core processes.

With the thought of offering optimal flexibility to businesses irrespective of scale, WareIQ lets brands start as small as a single rack or a pallet with no minimum-security deposits, and utilise their pan-India network of warehouses in a plug-and-play manner. Whether it’s a third-party seller trying to manage omnichannel delivery or a D2C brand looking to set up their own store and engage with customers directly, thereby saving fees that would have been paid to Amazon and other established e-commerce players – one can create own fulfilment network offering rapid delivery of either next day or two-day delivery. Additional features like billed-on-usage pricing with no minimum deposits, along with no additional spending on warehousing management system or shipping software, etc., make WareIQ a preferred e-commerce fulfilment service provider.

“Within 14 months of operations, scaling rapidly, WareIQ is currently working with 200+ online and retail brands with $2 million of annualised run-rate,” says Vaidya. With its target market consisting of growing e-commerce brands that run into the challenge of poor shipping timelines and sub-optimum service levels on their own website and marketplaces, it has been working with clients across verticals like FMCG, fashion & lifestyle, cosmetics, electronics, nutraceuticals, home furnishing,. etc. “WareIQ has been a partner of choice for prominent industry leaders and new-age D2C brands like Kama Ayurveda, Lotus Herbals, Setu.in, Just Herbs, Sangeetha Mobiles etc.”

Currently, the company’s network of fulfilment centres exists in all metros (NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata) with a new centre recently launched in Guwahati to accelerate timelines in North-East, thereby covering 27,000 pin codes pan-India. WareIQ charges a standard rate for storage, order processing, last-mile delivery and tech platform. “Making money on every transaction through its platform has made the company profitable from Day 1 and has been able to successfully deliver over 100,000 parcels per day,” says Vaidya.

The company recently raised $1.75 million of funding from Y Combinator, Funders Club, Pioneer fund, Soma Capital, Elmers Advisors and founders of Flexport. The company witnessed about 60-70% of e-commerce volumes coming in from Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities.