China’s leading local on-demand delivery and retail platform, Dada Group (Nasdaq: DADA) launched in July 2021 an open platform dedicated to making autonomous delivery services smoother and smarter.
In the middle of the 7th 415 Intra-City Shopping Festival, the open platform will have a lot to deliver – not only packages, but also a better fulfillment experience, for the massive shopping spree.
First show during “415 Intra-City Shopping Festival”
The autonomous delivery operation open platform will definitely play a vital role during this year’s “415 Intra-City Shopping Festival”, an on-demand O2O shopping spree that is happening till April 17, the event was initiated by Dada’s on-demand retail arm, JDDJ, 7 years ago.
The event will be reaching its largest-ever scale with over 150,000 offline stores across over 1,700 cities and counties engaged, to provide consumers in China with products across all categories, deliverable within one hour.
Coming along with the scale is the large number of orders, that pose challenges to deliverers’ fulfillment capacity.
The autonomous delivery operation open platform proposes a smarter solution that helps lower costs, and improves efficiency for delivery partners, thanks to its three key functionalities, which are smart dispatching system of unmanned vehicles, human-vehicle interaction system, and smart order management system. In addition to providing massive delivery orders, the platform also enables its partners with digitized operation tools, and a secure delivery experience.
For instance, the platform has now realized automation in order distribution for supermarkets, and can manage pick-ups, terminal connections, and abnormal order processing through its human-vehicle interaction system, to empower connected unmanned vehicles in fulfilling online orders in an efficient way.
A platform that empowers and creates value for all parties involved
The on-demand delivery industry is becoming more open and collaborative as an ecosystem. Technology is playing a core role in optimizing operational efficiency of all parties involved.
Positioned to be the establisher of the unmanned delivery ecosystem, Dada aims to link its upstream and downstream partners, and scale up the R&D of the software and infrastructure for autonomous delivery services as part of its latest efforts to empower retailing with smarter delivery solutions.
Bearing Dada’s vision of building up an ecosystem that is creating sustainable value for all parties, the autonomous delivery open platform is an example of how Dada is leveraging technology to innovate the on-demand delivery.
Data also show strong potentials and a promising future of the platform – according to the company’s Q4 results, orders fulfilled by Dada Now for SME merchants in Q4 increased by 100% year-over-year. Furthermore, since the open platform’s official launch in July 2021, it has delivered over 30,000 orders for supermarket partners, meanwhile, its delivery fulfillment rates remained stable at over 95% even during heavy promotional periods and bad weather, disclosed the company on its Q4 earnings call.
An example worthy of note is the open platform’s mobilization amid the current epidemic resurgence, where citizens’ booming online orders of daily necessities have posed a challenge to deliverers’ capacity. To address the issues, Dada has deployed its autonomous delivery operation open platform to ensure citizens’ daily supplies. On the roads, in the markets in cities and provinces such as Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Hefei, unmanned delivery vehicles that are connected to Dada’s autonomous delivery operation open platform are seen delivering the much-needed groceries and medications from big-name chain store partners such as SEVEN FRESH, Yonghui, to delivery spots in communities nearby before staff pick up the packages at the spots – ensuring a thoroughly contactless store-to-home process.
