Parcel Santa gets delivery into condo residents' hands 24/7

JIM Huang was working in the last-mile delivery business when Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam inspired him to quit his job and start his own venture.

Specifically, it was when Mr Tharman announced in April last year that the government was looking at implementing a nationwide common parcel locker system.

These Federated Lockers, which are expected to be placed in public housing estates (after pilot tests in 2018) would help to solve a problem commonly faced by online shoppers and delivery companies - a parcel arrives for the customer but nobody is home to receive it.

This results in a failed delivery, which is a waste of time and cost for the last-mile courier company, and a hassle for the customer who now has to reschedule the delivery.

Punggol and Bukit Panjang have been identified as pilot sites for Federated Lockers. The six-to-12-month pilot, to go live in the second half of 2018, will offer 75 lockers at the start; the network will be expanded later to 760 lockers across the island.

Mr Huang, motivated by the Government's plan, decided to get into the game himself - but starting with condominiums.

And so he began Parcel Santa, which now provides lockers to 60 condos all over Singapore, with more coming on board.

"Parcel deliveries are usually not announced to the customer in advance, so they cannot anticipate when exactly they have to be home to accept it," he noted. "So while couriers don't have problems getting the parcel to the address, they do often face problems getting it into the customer's hands."

Parcel Santa works with the courier companies who make parcel deliveries islandwide, including DHL, UPS and FedEx.

When the courier company receives a parcel for delivery, it can tell from the postal code whether the parcel is going to a condo that has a Parcel Santa locker system.

The courier will then place the parcel into one of the lockers. The customer will get a text message or email with a one-time password that they can use to unlock the locker and collect their purchase.

The company chose to tie up with courier firms instead of e-commerce players simply because there are fewer of the former than the latter.

"From the courier firm's point of view, this makes their work more efficient. It reduces their risk of a failed first delivery, which can be up to 20 per cent of total delivery volume," Mr Huang said.

Today, he notes, a courier in Singapore has 60 to 70 parcels to deliver on average each day.

"But imagine Singles Day - this is peak delivery season worldwide when delivery volume increases tenfold. Instead of delivering parcels door-to-door, they could drop 10 to 20 parcels off at one single point."

Parcel Santa charges the courier firms a fee for using their lockers. The end consumers - the condo and its residents - do not have to pay a fee.

One issue that the firm faced when it first began introducing its service to condos here was that of security. "We have addressed this too. Usually you don't know who is delivering your parcel but our system only allows registered couriers to deliver parcels to our lockers."

That is, the courier firm has to give Parcel Santa the names, IC numbers and mobile phone numbers of every one of its couriers. When the courier wants to deposit a parcel in the locker, he has to key in his details first.

Parcel Santa hopes to have its locker systems at 500 condos islandwide by June 2018 and also plans to submit a tender for the Federated Locker pilot.

Beyond that, it is also looking at adding complementary services that people could use with its lockers.

"For example, laundry. If I want something dry cleaned I could deposit my clothes in a locker. The dry cleaner could pick them up and deliver them back to the locker," Mr Huang said.

Other possibilities include using the lockers for the delivery of food items such as fresh roasted coffee beans, alcohol and beverages.

"Basically we could be your delivery concierge. In the West a lot of apartments have a doorman or concierge who handles such deliveries but in Asia only high-end residences have such services, and even then they don't work around the clock. Our service is 24/7 and free," he added.

Once the business is steady in Singapore, the company has plans to expand regionally, in markets such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, where e-commerce is also booming.

This will likely happen in late 2018 or 2019, Mr Huang said, although the firm has begun approaching potential partners in these markets already.