Case study
Six years of delivery in one Kerala town
Boxall has run a delivery service in Thodupuzha, a mid-sized town in Idukki, since 2020. In that time it has served more than 30,000 customers, delivered over 5,00,000 orders and created more than 200 jobs, without expanding to a second town. It took three years to reach the first 100,000 orders and three more to add the next 400,000. The apps did not arrive until 2022, two years after the service was already running.
- 6
- years, one town
- 30,000+
- customers served
- 5,00,000+
- orders delivered
- 200+
- jobs created
How it went
Year by year
- 2020 Boxall launches in Thodupuzha with groceries and local shops. No app, and no other town.
- 2022 The Android and iPhone apps go live, two years after the service started running.
- 2023 Incubated by Kerala Startup Mission with a seed grant, and recognised by DPIIT (DIPP98516).
- 2023 More than 50 shops on the platform, and the 100,000th order.
- 2026 30,000+ customers, 5,00,000+ orders and more than 200 jobs created.
How it runs
The operating numbers
How the service runs day to day, rather than what it adds up to over six years.
- Delivery time
- 30 to 45 minutes for food. 90 to 150 minutes for everything else.
- Area covered
- Roughly a 10 km radius around Thodupuzha town.
- Typical order value
- Groceries run ₹600 and up. Food orders average ₹400 and up.
- Riders on the road
- About five at a time, on a rolling basis. Kept deliberately low so the people working earn properly rather than splitting the same work more ways.
Most orders come from customers who have ordered before. In a town this size the same names come back every week, which is the whole reason a local service can hold its own against a national app.
On the ground
Photos from these six years
Our own photos. The first office, the early team, and the four people who started Boxall in 2020.
What the numbers say
What this means for your business
We ran it for two years before building the app
Boxall ran for two years before the apps existed. By the time we built the app, we already knew how deliveries actually worked in this town, so the app was built to match. An agency that has never delivered an order cannot give you that.
The first years are the slow ones
Three years to 100,000 orders, then three years to add 400,000. The early part is where you find out what your town will actually pay for, which shops matter and how riders should be paid. If you already have customers and stock, you start past most of it.
It runs without the people who built it
The four founders started Boxall in 2020. It is run day to day by a team now, and the orders kept going. That matters more here than it sounds: a delivery operation that depends on its founders being in the room every day is not a system, it is four people working hard. What we hand over is the first thing, because it already had to be.
One town was enough
Boxall never expanded. Half a million orders came from a single mid-sized town, which is the question every retailer asks first: whether a place this size can carry its own delivery service. It can, and this is the evidence.
On the record
Who has backed us
Incubated by Kerala Startup Mission with a seed grant in 2023, and recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade as a startup, DPIIT number DIPP98516. Founded in 2020 by four people from Thodupuzha, and run day to day by a team since.
Your city
Start with what you already have
If you already run a supermarket, hypermarket or restaurant group, you start with the customers and stock it took us three years to build.