A STUDY ON LAST-MILE DELIVERY TECHNOLOGIES IN E-COMMERCE IN INDIA

Abstract

India's e-commerce sector, already worth around USD 137 billion in 2025 and expected to grow more than twice as large by 2030, is being transformed by a frantic quest for speedier, less expensive and greener means of bridging the "last mile" between hub and doorstep. That brief patch of travel now accounts for over a third of each fulfilment rupee, largely because India's large cities are congested with traffic and its villages continue to use single‑lane, weather‑beaten roads. The nation's continued dependence on cash‑on‑delivery further muddies the math of speed and price. Against this background, the current study assesses four technology families—traditional diesel vans, battery‑electric delivery vehicles, unmanned aerial drones and artificial‑intelligence routing platforms—to discover whether any or all can disrupt the intractable cost–time trade‑off that has constrained customer satisfaction and profitability. To deliver an equitable verdict the research team combined primary and secondary evidence. Primary data consisted of audited cost sheets provided by top operators including Flipkart, Amazon India and Delhivery; six hundred beyond‑visual‑line‑of‑sight drone telemetry logs from Telangana's "Medicine from the Sky" sandbox; forty matched benchmark runs by diesel vans; rich Directorate General of Civil Aviation compliance files; cold‑chain records from district health centres; and two rounds of household surveys in five beneficiary villages. Secondary inputs—peer-reviewed logistics journals, market projections, government policy reports and consulting white papers—offered trend context and enabled the team to confirm or refute assertions coming out of the field. Through these sources a distinct pattern became evident. Battery‑electric vehicles running dense urban routes reach lifecycle cost parity with diesel siblings once they travel around eighty kilometres per day, and from there on provide a fifteen‑to‑twenty‑percent reduction while eliminating tailpipe emissions. Hybrid vertical‑take‑off‑and‑landing aircraft were even more revolutionary on country roads between twelve and eighteen kilometres. Once daily use breaches the two-hundred-sortie threshold, per-parcel expenditure by the drone falls to approximately ninety rupees, a whole quarter below the cost of van operations in the countryside after considering fuel, tyre wear and man hours. The same drones also broke down door‑to‑door transit time on the pilot corridor—from forty‑five to eighteen minutes—an acceleration that paid a tangible public‑health dividend: temperature‑excursion discards for vi paediatric vaccines dropped by seventeen percent over a three‑month period.The environmental benefit was just as dramatic. Each battery‑electric van replaces around eighty kilograms of carbon dioxide per one hundred kilometres over its diesel equivalent, and each rural drone parcel saves almost three hundred grams of CO₂‑equivalent compared to a van delivering a standard twenty‑five‑parcel load. Such savings put e‑commerce operators in line with their 2030 net‑zero commitments and offer a compelling co‑benefit for policymakers facing pressure to deliver on national climate ambitions.None of this achievement would have been achieved without a helpful but vigilant regulatory regime. State‑sandboxes, such as Telangana's, provided room for operators to conduct BVLOS missions while mandating tight geofences, backup control systems and auto‑failsafes. The outcome—no air‑space intrusions or payload losses on six hundred sorties—reduced the regulatory discussion from skepticism to optimism. Nevertheless, national regulations still in the pipeline can increase costs by necessitating parachute recovery units and remote‑identification beacons, as urban electric‑vehicle roll‑outs are held to ransom by concessional parking schemes and a sparse public‑charging network. Community response is the last pillar of the study's conclusions. Early village skepticism dissipated when drones started delivering life-saving blood bags and seeds in time for planting; household reliability scores increased more than thirty points on a one-hundred-point scale. Though only a few local youths were in work during the testing phase, modelling suggests that a scaled hub‑and‑spoke network could create dozens of skilled jobs in battery management, pad operations and basic air‑traffic supervision—proof that new logistics technology can spur rural employment instead of displacing it. Altogether, these findings illustrate that last‑mile delivery in India is now a win-win game between speed, affordability and greenness. As electric vans are densified in city centers and drones are unleashed on well‑selected rural corridors, operators can reduce delivery times, expand margins and slash carbon simultaneously.With transparent dashboards releasing on‑time rates, carbon savings and any safety incidents, regulators and local communities can remain assured even as flight levels skyrocket. If battery costs remain stable—or keep on falling, as they have recently—and if upcoming BVLOS regulations are informed by the hard‑earned evidence of pioneering pilots, India's e‑commerce industry will have a model to replicate for not just parcel delivery but also for health, opportunity and climate progress throughout its expansive and diverse geography.