Xiaomi partners with Smartbox to deliver purchases to digital lockers in Delhi-NCR

2017 had been an eventful year for Xiaomi in India. The smartphone manufacturer managed to tie with Samsung to claim the number 1 spot in the Indian smartphone market. A big reason behind the growth was Xiaomi's rapid expansion into offline retail in India. Xiaomi partnered up with a lot of large format retailers like Croma, Sangeetha, etc. to distribute its smartphones in the country. The company also announced plans to launch as many as 100 Mi Stores in India and has already opened quite a few of them all across India.

Xiaomi now plans to double down on the success it has had in India by partnering up with Smartbox for online orders placed on mi.com. A common problem in India is that, if you're living alone as a bachelor, then being able to receive e-commerce orders placed online is a futile exercise as many deliveries happen. This is because during the day time, bachelors are most likely to be in college or office. Some people are able to convince their neighbours or the security guard to collect their orders for them but for a lot of these people, their orders go undelivered.

Smartbox aims to solve this problem by giving people the ability to get their orders delivered to a dedicated digital locker, which are under CCTV surveillance to monitor for theft. Smartbox has partnered with a few e-commerce websites that, upon check out, give you the option to have your parcel delivered to the nearest Smartbox location. The Smartboxes are generally placed in densely populated regions such as big residential townships. Once the order is delivered, you would receive a OTP on your phone number that, when entered, would allow you to unlock the digital locker and collect your parcel. Smartbox also gives you the ability to pay for Cash on Delivery orders via credit or debit cards.

As of now Smartbox is only limited to Delhi NCR, but the company plans on expanding the service to other regions as well. Missing deliveries is a common problem across the globe, and Amazon tried to address the same last year with its Amazon Key initiative which allowed Prime Members to purchase a kit that included a security camera and a smart lock. While checking out, prime members had the option to select an "in-home" shipping option which would allow the delivery guy to deliver the order inside your home in a manner which Amazon claims is secure.

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