Editor’s note: Today's post comes from Bhaskar Konduru, CTO at Licious, a company that's using technology to disrupt the traditional market for fresh meat and seafood, and delivering high quality fresh products to the doors of Indians in seven major cities.

I’ve worked among some of India's most exciting startups over the past decade, and I'm still passionate about using technology to transform our everyday experiences. 

But I’m not just a techie, I'm a foodie, too. So, when the chance to work with Licious came up, I jumped at the opportunity. Our goal at Licious is to make it easier for Indians to buy fresh meat and seafood by controlling every stage of the meat procurement and packaging process. We keep the meat fresh from farm to fork, maintaining it at the optimum temperature during transportation so it arrives at optimal quality.

We want to make buying meat not only more convenient, but also more pleasant. Like many Indians, I love all kinds of meat, from tender spring chicken to rich goat curries. The purchasing experience, however, can be less appealing. Buying from a traditional butcher, it's often hard to know how the animal has been treated and how the meat has been stored. With Licious, you select your fresh meat, seafood, or pre-prepared products online, and they’re delivered to your door in clean, vacuum-sealed packaging within 90 minutes. Because we work closely with our farmers, and control all the processing, we can guarantee the quality of our products.

To deliver high-quality products that meet international food safety standards at an acceptable price point, we leverage technology at every step. That's why we decided to use Google Maps Platform from the start, working with MediaAgility to implement it. Today, all along our supply chain, from our cold-chain logistics to our processing hubs and our delivery fleet, Google Maps Platform provides us with the data we need to make the right decisions, and provide a high level of service to our customers.

As anyone who's visited Bengaluru or New Delhi will know, traffic can be unpredictable and busy. With some roads unpaved, addresses can be hard to find as our delivery fleet can't always drive up to the door. To make sure we get the right address every time, we ask customers to input their location when they first visit the website. Google Maps Platform helps customers quickly input their exact address with Autocomplete. Then the Geocoding API translates that into geographic coordinates so our delivery fleet knows exactly where they need to hand over the order.

When it comes to delivering the product, our delivery fleet managers put together the optimal itinerary for our drivers calculating the travel times between locations using the Distance Matrix API. Customers can then track their order directly on the map using the Licious app, so they have an up-to-date delivery estimate and know when to expect their food. With more than 17,000 orders a day, it's important to get that right and make sure our drivers are able to use their time efficiently.

Before we put all these capabilities in place, we experienced a large number of missed or delayed deliveries, along with calls from hungry customers waiting for their orders. By making the most of Google Maps Platform, the number of calls to our call center has gone down by 50%, and the number of failed deliveries is down 30%. Our customers can trust us to deliver, and we're enjoying a 90% repeat customer rate as a result. 

It's not just our delivery operation that benefits from the transparency and richness of data that Google Maps Platform provides. Our products are perishable, so we need to operate on a just-in-time basis, where we prepare them only when we receive an order, and deliver them with no gaps or hold-ups in the journey. To make this possible, we use data from Google Maps Platform. It helps us to make all the calculations needed for our logistics, to direct the right products to our processing and distribution hubs, and tag orders to the right hub. We’ve set ourselves apart by focusing on the entire supply chain, and Google Maps Platform has helped us to make it more efficient at every step.

As a CTO, my mission is to make sure I have the right data and tools to support innovation, and help the business grow. The aim for Licious is to reach INR 10 billion in revenue, or $146 million. Along the way, using Google Maps Platform to support our growth feeds my twin passions of innovative technology and delicious food. And though I love meat, here's an insider's tip: our garlic prawns are truly exceptional.

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.