Pune-based last-mile delivery startup Dispatch Network has raised Rs 5 crore in a pre-seed funding round led by Antler India, with angel investors Krishi Fagwani, founder of Thrive, Yashin Mahadevia and Parth Modwadhia also participating.

Dispatch runs a fleet of delivery riders who carry orders for food delivery and quick commerce platforms. The startup uses its own AI model to decide which order each rider takes next and where the rider should wait for the one after, with the aim of cutting the distance riders travel without an order.

The raised capital will be used to grow the AI team behind that model, which the startup calls the Large Logistics Spatio-Temporal Model, or LLSTM.

Dispatch said its next goal is 50,000 orders a day across five cities.

According to the Dispatch Network, every delivery app has its own peak hours and slack periods, so riders spend much of a shift waiting or riding empty, up to 50% of their kilometres without an order. The rider pays for fuel and wear on every one of those kilometres, but earns nothing on them.

Dispatch's bet is that the fleet that can sustainably pay riders the most will attract the most riders, and that the only way to pay more is to make each hour on the road more productive.

To do that, it sequences work across several platforms instead of reacting to one order at a time. Many fleets let riders choose which order to accept. Dispatch instead assigns every order to a specific rider, which it said leads to better sequencing and fewer empty miles.

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