• From five hours lag to real-time SMS notifications upon delivery with AppSheet

• Streamlining the hiring process with Forms

• Supporting delivery partners with the most efficient commute with Google Maps

• Enabling seamless team collaboration during COVID-19 and across cities with Meet

Being a startup often means having to think creatively to get things done. In its early days, a large part of Supr Daily’s processes were manual. Delivery partners would receive a printout of orders they need to fulfill on a piece of paper, and after they had completed the deliveries, they would have to submit the physical sheets of paper back to the office. From there, a group of employees would check the delivery sheets and SMS customers individually, confirming the completion of their order.

Siddardha and his team knew that they needed to speed up and streamline deliveries for growth. Keeping in mind the lean team he had to work with, and the limited engineering resources, he searched for a solution that would be simple enough for non-engineers to use. "We found AppSheet, a no-code app development platform, to be the solution for our business."

In just two days, a team member who comes from a non-tech business background, built a fully-functioning app for Supr Daily’s delivery partners on AppSheet. "With zero technical knowledge, our colleague went through the AppSheet documentation and was able to develop an app, which gave us the confidence that this technology would help our business move forward and innovate very quickly. It was truly a game-changer for the company," says Siddardha.

The app provided delivery partners with a list of customers for the day, the items they ordered, and their addresses. After the items were delivered, delivery partners simply needed to tap on a button and an automated message would be sent out to the customer instantly, confirming the items delivered. This instant notification saved Supr Daily up to five hours, since customers now received notifications in real-time. "This app truly revolutionized the way we work. With the app, we could also scale fast, and grew from having 500 delivery partners, to 4,000 in four months," says Siddardha.

Today, Supr Daily has expanded to include other grocery items to its list of offerings. This means it needs its own warehouse, and a warehouse management system to keep track of the various moving parts. "Inside the warehouse, employees are always moving around so it’s important to have a mobile app to assist them, whether in stocktaking or order fulfillment. With AppSheet, we’ve been able to build about five to 10 apps in just a couple of months," says Siddardha.

Unlike other grocery delivery apps, Supr Daily only does one round of deliveries every day. This means that maximizing the number of deliveries within this short window of time is crucial.

Even though customers can place their orders anytime in the day for a next-day delivery, most customers tend to place their orders just before the cut-off time for delivery the following morning. "From huge apartments to densely packed homes accessible by smaller roads, we cannot expect our delivery partners to figure out where each customer lives with just an address, especially when they are expected to complete a large number of deliveries," explains Siddardha.

Recognizing this challenge, the team decided to leverage Google Maps to help drivers identify the location of each household. "At 4am, you can't ring doorbells or give customers a phone call. The streets are dark so it can be tricky to find the right address if drivers haven’t been to a particular locality," explains Siddardha. By embedding Google Maps into their delivery partners’ mobile apps, drivers can see exactly where they are, and the pins of all the customers they need to deliver to for the day, with routing information for the most efficient commute.

Even though employees at Supr Daily use a range of tools provided by Google Workspace, Siddardha says the most used tools for the organization are Sheets, Docs, and Forms. From customer feedback to employee and partner experience surveys, Supr Daily uses Forms to manage new hires and delivery partners. "Before using Forms, we would do everything by email, and that process was very hectic and painful, to say the least," explains Siddardha. "Now, we can easily allocate interview slots and everything is done clearly on Forms. It has taken a huge load off our Human Resources team."

Google Meet is another platform that has changed the way teams communicate at Supr Daily. From daily work-in-progress meetings to town hall events that involve 500 to 600 participants, Meet has carried the team through the pandemic without disruption as they could continue collaborating and communicating seamlessly.

Post-pandemic, Supr Daily has temporarily downscaled its operations in May 2022 to refocus and rethink its business model. Operating out of Bangalore now, Siddardha says that new plans are underway. "We are very bullish that there is a long-term market for early morning deliveries. That’s why we are implementing a lot of ‘zero to one innovation’ across our entire supply-chain. Google Workspace has been with us through our first phase of innovation, and we will continue to rely on these tools again to take us to the next phase."