Forgot to buy milk or is your newspaper boy late again? Fret not, as this B'luru start-up will get your morning necessities right on time 

It’s 10 pm. You’re getting ready to turn in for the night. But oops! Did you forget to buy a loaf of bread for tomorrow’s breakfast? Or did forget to inform your milkman that you’d like an extra packet of milk? Don’t bother going grocery hunting late at night! Here is a start-up incubated at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bengaluru that can help you. Aptly called Morning Cart, this start-up will have your order delivered to your doorstep as early as the milk reaches you in the morning.

The subscription-based platform works like so. Having downloaded their application and signing up, one can place orders as late as 10 pm the previous day, and staples and essentials are made available even before breakfast the next day. To enable this, the start-up has tied up with milkmen in certain localities in Bengaluru to deliver the products.

Morning Cart is connecting consumers to suppliers of milk, newspapers and other morning necessities through mobile applications and web technology. We are a ‘zero inventory’ model and have strategic partnerships with top retailers in the country

Satish Shetty, Co-founder, Morning Cart

Speaking about the start-up, co-founder Satish Shetty explains, “The service is made available in parts of Bengaluru from Attibele to Koramangala and Marathahalli to Bannerghatta Road. There is no additional delivery charge as of now. Customers can place orders even late in the night. We have a back-end team supplying products to milkmen who then take it to households.”

But where did the idea for this come from? “Once, we had a new milk vendor who would supply to our apartment complex, but he stopped all of a sudden. When we approached him, he told us about multiple challenges. That’s when the idea of creating an app to counter this originated,” he says. Both Shetty and co-founder, Anuj Bishnoi felt the need to create a win-win situation for the milkmen and the customers.

Morning Cart is functional in Bengaluru and some parts of Chennai. The network is strong in most of the high rises to the south and east of Bengaluru, starting from Attibele to Koramangala and Marathahalli, Bellandur to Bannerghatta Road and spreading towards Kanakapura

“The biggest concern for most milkmen was that they were not paid on time. They made a minimum of two trips to every household to collect money. The others had given customers coupons and every time the dairy industry changes the prices, these people are in for a challenge again,” explains Shetty, adding, “In some cases, milkmen have also been met with closed doors as customers often forget to inform them beforehand that they will not be available to collect the supply.”

Upon registration, a virtual wallet is created for each subscriber. Customers are free to recharge their wallet online through credit card/debit card/cash. Customers can track their daily expenses in a simple excel format

Making this easier, the app also gives one the choice to make payments for their everyday supply of milk and curd, besides the products that they wish to have delivered. The user can also set preferences for a week or make alterations as per their requirements. So far, Morning Cart has over 12,500 customers.