Bengaluru, Dec. 4 -- When Jaya Singh Yadav, a home-based home decor seller in Indore, started selling her wares online about six years ago, she was a tiny player in a city where logistics options were plentiful but fragmented. She gets most of her business through Meesho Pvt. Ltd, an e-commerce company, supplying low-cost home improvement goods to customers across Madhya Pradesh. Dozens of third-party delivery operators servicing different neighbourhoods delivered the goods, but coverage varied sharply across pin codes.

Reliability often depended on which partner happened to handle a particular shipment, while pickups shifted without notice, return cycles were inconsistent and tracking frequently disappeared between handovers.

To cope, ...