Meet Carter
“One Hour Delivery – Anywhere in the City”
Carter is the leading provider of logistics solutions in Capetown, Johannesburg, Victoria, and Durban, South Africa. After beginning as a ride-hailing startup in early development in 2020, world events generated a pivot to product delivery. Today, Carter matches merchants to one of their over 1500 drivers to provide on-demand delivery to their customers.
Covid Drives The Need For On-Demand Delivery Services
“We Pivoted from People to Packages”
At the peak of the covid pandemic, residents stayed home instead of shopping at brick-and-mortar stores. The market no longer called for people-moving services like Carter’s ride-hailing startup. After conversations with numerous merchants, they saw an opportunity to fill an unserved industry – delivery logistics. Carter decided to fill the gap between merchant and customer and give businesses the ability to execute on-demand delivery.
High Demand For On-Demand Calls For Innovation
“Solve the Pain-Point of the 60-minute delivery”
As Carter grew, the need for route planning became evident. An in-house route planning algorithm eased the burden, but it only worked up to 10 stops. The computational resources needed on their servers were a little higher than they had planned, so they decided it was best to look for someone who specializes in route planning solutions.
Route4Me Enables Carter To Do What It Does Best
“Route4Me can do some crazy stuff that we hadn’t even thought of. We can provide value to our customers in a much shorter time.”
Route4Me’s API enables Carter to be the single source of truth for all of their users, from merchant to driver to end customer. Route4Me’s volume and time-based routing constraints prove especially helpful. “It’s much more cost-effective,” says founder Ishmael Evans. “We can focus on things we’re better at doing rather than trying to replicate something you guys have done already extremely well.”
Carter Increases Efficiency For Merchants And Drivers
“We only charge on the distance, time, and vehicle type.”
By utilizing Route4Me’s API, Carter is able to charge merchants based on distance and vehicle type rather than the number of parcels. This allows them to charge merchants the lowest cost possible, thus reducing delivery fees and product costs. Drivers follow efficient routes and are able to fill their schedules. According to Ishmael, “It’s sort of a win-win-win situation for us.”
