The ease of services rendered through on-demand services and e-commerce platforms is pegged on delivery speed and low costs. Customers continue to revert to selections that deliver promptly at fair prices. These are some of their most important strengths, and customers sometimes appreciate them over features such as live tracking and easy refunds.
Ride-sharing networks are now cutting costs by batching parcels with passenger rides over short local distances. Parcel services, on the contrary, combine deliveries over larger geographical distances with more loose delivery constraints (such as delivery time window), making the most of each mile covered.
These tested strategies have caught more speculation in the recent past, courtesy of Udit Agarwal. His experience in automation and eCommerce platforms provides an insightful perspective on these changes.
Agarwal points out how one of the most popular ride-hailing services incorporates local deliveries directly with passenger rides. Higher utilization of delivery resources on the same day and directionally similar route reduces costs per order. “True delivery wins come from matching the delivery set up to the items in the order; perishables demand a temperature controlled environment based on regulations and tighter timelines,” he added.
Delivery apps allow customer tips as an addition to driver pay, which can be significant part of the compensation for drivers in highly batched orders. With parcel delivery, larger delivery windows are planned, and additional orders are batched to achieve unmatched route and delivery density for even lower landed costs.
Artificial intelligence is now monitoring multiple factors for delivery orders including real-time traffic feeds, the size of the vehicle and packages, and even the road conditions, to derive efficient delivery parameters.
Off the shelf AI based solutions are able to predict traffic peak times, moving delivery routes to lower cost and quicker route options and are available for eCommerce platforms to adopt.
As these batching and routing models evolve, retailers are also beginning to redesign how delivery commitments are offered to customers. Instead of enforcing uniform delivery expectations across all orders, platforms are introducing flexible delivery windows that allow systems to optimize routes dynamically. Orders that are less time-sensitive can be grouped more aggressively, reducing empty miles and improving overall fleet utilization without sacrificing reliability.
Agarwal emphasizes that this operational flexibility is becoming just as important as speed. Giving customers clear choices between faster delivery and lower-cost delivery enables platforms to balance efficiency with experience. Over time, this approach lowers costs for retailers while maintaining predictable service for customers.
As smarter batching becomes standard, delivery efficiency will rely less on expanding fleets and more on intelligent coordination. Routing precision, vehicle utilization, and adaptive planning will increasingly define competitive advantage, turning logistics into a quieter but more resilient backbone of modern retail.
Costs should ease further through these efficiencies and technology enablement. In the future, retailers and delivery providers alike will thrive by making deliveries reliable, affordable, AI-enabled, and accessible to everyone, turning logistics into a quiet backbone of modern life.