Starting with the starving stomach to establishing Delhivery as a unicorn startup of India, success story of Sahil Barua will definitely going to inspire you.
Have you ever seen delivery boys wearing blue uniforms with their huge backpacks? I bet you have, be it at your doorstep or on the road, the ‘Delhivery’ boys are all around. The success of e-commerce logistic startup Delhivery is no secret. The 34-year-old co-founder and CEO of Delhivery – Sahil Barua and the team of co-founders are credited the most for the success of the company.
It is said that the people who begin at an early age, end up going far in their life. Similar is the case with Sahil Barua. He is an alumnus of the prestigious NIT-Karnataka and IIM-Bangalore. His professional journey started when he visited the University of Maryland in the US to work for almost 4 months as a ‘research intern’.
While he was pursuing his post graduation from IIM-B, he interned at London based Bain & Company as a Summer Associate for three months. Post completion of his master’s degree, he joined Bain & Company as a full time Associate Consultant. After a year, he was promoted to senior consultant and after another year as a consultant.
While working at Bain & Co, Sahil deepened friendship with his like minded colleagues – Suraj Saharan and Mohit Tandon (co-founders of Delhivery). They all wanted to start their own ventures without even having the clue about what to start. Altogether they decided to leave their jobs to sort things out for their own startup.
What helped them the most was that they were friend to the co-founders of Zomato – Pankaj Chaddah and Deepinder Goyal. Back then, Zomato was only an online medium to present eateries to its users. The three found the vacuum and their business – delivering the food from the restaurant. They brainstormed and came up with an idea within a few days.
They started delivering food of the restaurant they used to order frequently from. The company started with the team of 10 people including 4 delivery persons. Soon, the business expanded and they started delivering in under half an hour. Around 100 orders were delivered per day in Gurgaon itself within a short span of time.
“Abhishek said – look if you can deliver food in half an hour, why don’t you deliver packages for me as well? Seeing the progress, Prashant of Healthkart came on board and said why don’t you deliver for us as well? It would be great if it would reach customers in half an hour after they ordered them,” Sahil stated.
This proved to be the turning point for Delhivery. They entered into the e-commerce logistic business and drastically expanded to most of the parts of India. At present, the company delivers at around 15,000 pin codes across hundreds of cities. It recently secured $413 million in a funding round led by the SoftBank Vision Fund. After this funding round, the company’s valuation stands more than $1.5 billion.
The excellent outcome is the result of the hard and smart work that Sahil, other co-founders and the team has done. Wishing them a great journey ahead!
