Last-mile delivery logistics start-up Connect India on Friday launched country-wide services covering 17 States and 150 cities and towns.

Founded by LR Sridhar, who has over 35 years of experience in last-mile logistics, Connect India recently raised ₹32 crore from early stage investorAavishkar. With a network of 1,500 centres, it aims to cover 25,000 pin codes. It plans to develop 50,000 neighbourhood delivery centres in three years.

“We are creating a common distribution platform for all industry sectors that will have the capacity to create hyper local neighbourhood distribution centres comprising kirana, department, mobile and medical stores, who will deliver anything from groceries to daily staples, e-commerce shipments, medicines and courier packages in their respective neighbourhoods. These neighbourhood stores can facilitate same-day deliveries between 6 am to 10 am and 6 pm to 10pm very easily,” Sridhar toldBusinessLine. “Our long-term vision is to use our distribution platform to generate ‘Re Commerce’ (rural enterprise) by empowering small rural artisans and producers to sell their produce through various e-commerce platforms.”

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“As part of the pilot we fulfilled 65 per cent of the orders on the first day in the interiors of Ludhiana and received cash on delivery within 24 hours,” said Samuel Thomas, Director - Transporation, Amazon India.