To build a business model for the establishment of smart parcel lockers in public spaces

Abstract

The project started with an idea to provide a locker system to the people in transit who wants to see the location and not be occupied in carrying the luggage. Under the CIIE’s first workshop we were asked to understand the industry initially followed by the thorough knowledge of value chain we are interested to work. We were provided with a toolkit to work upon the industry and find the challenges behind. Upon deep dive we found that apart from the traveller segment there is white space in the parcel delivery system in the residential and official setting. The parcel delivery system is itself an industry and is prevalent in the western nations. There is a huge scope in India in this sector and only a couple of start-ups work in this domain. We thus bifurcated our problem statement into two scenarios where in first scenario we keep a traveller in the centre and in than office person/student in centre. Thus, after the first workshop we were clear with the industry we need to work upon and were ready with a problem statement. Later we were engaged in a second workshop where we learned about the ideation and how we should deep dive into the problem. In the workshop we were provided with a toolkit about how to identify actual users of the product and carry out detailed interviews with the industry practitioners to understand whether our problem statement is feasible and what would be the potential challenges we would be facing. We carried out seven PIs with industry practitioners from academicians to consultants. In the interviews, we were brought into attention the already available solutions and the shortcomings in our proposed model. We also realised that this will be a CAPEX-heavy proposition and the pricing structure can be multi-sided instead of one. In addition to PIs with the practitioners, we also floated a google form to gauge the acceptance of ideas from the larger audience and a couple of PIs with actual potential users. In this process we found that the idea is acceptable but the WTP for the two scenarios are different as the reference for the two are different. For scenario 1 the reference is the cloakrooms available near railway stations thus a higher WTP whereas for scenario 2 the reference is the delivery charge applied by e-commerce giants, thus a lower WTP. The size of the locker demanded in the survey is larger in scenario 1 compared to scenario 2. After conducting the primary research we made a sensemaking exercise over the available information given in the toolkit and finally came up with a Service Blueprint which shows how the system will work and how the customer journey will look like.