Dispatch Network, a Pune-based last-mile delivery startup, has raised ₹5 crore in a pre-seed funding round led by Antler India. The company will use the capital to expand its AI team and develop its Large Logistics Spatio-Temporal Model (LLSTM), which it uses to improve delivery allocation and reduce idle time for riders.
The round also saw participation from angel investors Krishi Fagwani, Founder of Thrive, Yashin Mahadevia and Parth Modwadhia. This is Dispatch’s first public funding announcement.
Founded by Rajit Arya and Navneeth Kannan, Dispatch operates a delivery network that assigns orders to riders across multiple platforms. Unlike conventional delivery fleets, where riders often choose which orders to accept, Dispatch uses its AI model to determine which order a rider should take next and where they should wait for subsequent orders.
The company says its approach helps reduce empty kilometres and improve rider earnings by sequencing deliveries across platforms rather than responding to individual orders.
“Riders need more orders, but more importantly, they need the right next order. Every idle minute we remove goes back into a rider’s earnings, and that’s how we win supply,” said Rajit Arya, Co-Founder and CEO of Dispatch Network.
According to the company, delivery riders can spend up to 50% of their kilometres travelling without an order. This increases their operating costs while reducing the time available for paid deliveries. Dispatch’s model attempts to address this by coordinating demand across food delivery and quick-commerce platforms.
The company’s LLSTM is built specifically for logistics and mobility. It analyses city-level activity and uses delivery data to determine order allocation and rider movement. Every delivery, along with the decisions made during the process and their outcomes, feeds into the model’s training data.
“Most of the world’s deliveries still run on rules someone wrote by hand. We’re building the decision layer for last-mile delivery: which order, which rider, and where they should be next,” said Navneeth Kannan, Co-Founder and Head of Product and AI at Dispatch Network.
Dispatch claims that riders on its network earn around 55% more per month than the industry average. It also reports two-thirds fewer empty kilometres and rider retention that is 80% better than the industry average.
The company has completed more than 1,00,000 deliveries since launching in Pune in June. Its monthly delivery volume increased from 3,014 in June to 55,000 in October, with volumes doubling every month, according to the company. It currently handles around 3,500 deliveries a day.
Dispatch works with food delivery and quick-commerce platforms, including Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto, Instamart and BigBasket. It also serves hundreds of restaurants and stores through direct APIs and the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).
The startup plans to expand to Mumbai in November. Its next target is to process 50,000 orders a day across five cities.
“Most of last-mile delivery has been optimised for the platform. Rajit and Navneeth started from the rider, and that’s what we backed,” said Nitin Sharma, partner at Antler India.
The funding comes as delivery platforms compete for rider supply amid growing demand for food delivery and quick commerce. Dispatch believes improving the number of paid orders completed during each rider’s working hours can help address the mismatch between rider availability and delivery demand.
The company was founded by Arya, who has worked in electric mobility since 2009 and with delivery riders for five years, and Kannan, a product architect and engineer with a decade of experience in mobility systems. It moved into last-mile delivery this year and began operations in Pune in June.
