There’s no dearth of services for hailing taxis and even autos in India – Ola, TaxiForSure (now owned by Ola), Meru, Uber (when they’re not busy being banned), and so on. But it can be difficult to get any sort of delivery service that easily, with all of the coordination and haggling that you may have to do. Fortunately, there’s Roadrunnr – a service which allows you to coordinate deliveries with the convenience of an app, which gives you updates and notifications on the status. Considering the usefulness of such a service, it’s quite easy to see why they have been able to draw in a significant amount of funding – this time to the tune of $1,10,00,000. So if you run a restaurant and want to do deliveries without having a dedicated staff member or two for that purpose and without having a delivery vehicle, now you can. After all, their clientele includes places such as Faaso’s, Calvin’s, Pizza Stop, Brekkie, and Nagarjuna – and if these successful businesses are satisfied with their service, then they must be doing something right. Basically, Roadrunnr wants to build a sort of Uber-for-food service, and investors are ready to write checks for such startup ideas in India. Just last week, Ratan Tata had mentioned his willingness to invest in startups at his own discretion, and he’s not the only one by far. While one might argue that India hasn’t really thought beyond tech startups, it is true that it’s quickly becoming a haven for them, especially in cities like Bangalore (which is home to Roadrunnr, along with a number of other apps that we’ve written on). Roadrunnr itself is another hyperlocal service platform, and it seems this sort of thing is catching on in India, be it in the form of various delivery services or even social networking.
