Part 1: It’s All About You

Spending seven years in the United States, and over the course of my Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees, I had developed a personal brand whose promise I could uphold and upkeep. A brand embodied by empathy, critical thought, and an unwavering commitment to improvement and excellence. As I made my decision to co-found Pidge with my father, my role was very clear – build a brand-led business. Naturally, the direction was bound to be inspired by my own personal brand. But how do those personal characteristics manifest as a brand?

Every good brand has a defined and targeted audience. Sure, these audiences could be as narrow as ‘sprinters who can run 100m in under 10 seconds’ or as broad as ‘the athlete within each one of us’, but the commonality remains the focus and definition of the audience. Naturally, our target audience needs to form the bedrock of our brand. As we began to understand the pains across segments, it became evident that the underserved market in India is, counterintuitively, the upwardly-mobile and high-expenditure audience increasingly focused on experience.

As a reader, you’re going to ask me and yourself “How can that be, rich people have more options.” Well, in theory, yes, but actually the insight was that they have more of the same options. Specifically, in the delivery space, the gig-economy model has created a blanket (average) service standard. Non-exclusivity from existing brands has removed the personalized experience that we crave from services. After extensive research ranging from friends and family anecdotes to commissioned market findings, the clear understanding was that the at-the-door-experience needed to be exceptional. And the answer to that was simple – a delivery brand built with exclusive, trained, and highly personable employees.

That same market research and analysis revealed another concern amongst our audience – “Rushil, I see options on apps but it’s never what I want.” And that’s Pidge Cornerstone #2 – Representing the consumer. The simple truth is that this radius-restricted, order-rejected, shackled form of convenience is no convenience at all. Building a brand for our customers meant giving them the flexibility and control over what they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it.

Pidge is the only service in the market available 16 hours a day, seven days a week catering to all of Delhi-NCR – not just the 10-km radius that immediately surrounds you. So, whether you need your wedding outfit brought to you from Shahpur Jat to Indirapuram, or you need to actually send something yourself from Gurgaon to a friend in Noida, Pidge will do it securely and reliably.

Yes, securely. Because Pidge Cornerstone #3 is built on the pain that as we earn more, and as we spend on more expensive things, we need to take better care of those same things. It’s uncomfortable and frankly absurd that someone would trust their belongings with a delivery person who isn’t even an employee of the company! If your things get lost or mishandled, who do you contact? Which cookie-cutter question and answer presented to you captures your emotion when your expensive electronics get damaged or that special box of sweets arrives a few bites lighter?

Pidge’s security lies at three levels.

Online – live tracking and anonymizing information guarantees personal privacy.

Offline – our proprietary double-OTP and tamper-proof packaging system ensures the right package, delivered to the right person every time.

Finally, our People. Trained and employed delivery executives are equipped to handle even the most difficult scenarios and ensure that the privacy of your delivery is maintained. Add to that, always-available human customer support gives the peace of mind whenever you need an actual voice on the other end of the line.

A brand-led business is an empathetic one that solves problems in ways you need. So yes, building a brand-led business actually means making ‘it’ about you, not us. Pidge was formed and founded to make lives easier. Your lives easier. And not in a way where you’re getting more of the same, but starting with empathy. And empathy here means understanding the pain people experience with delivery-as-a-need but also with the existing solutions they use to fill that need.