One day, Shashwat Murarka sat in his college apartment thinking about his relationship with food delivery. Sometimes, the order never arrived, and he had to wander through his apartment building, looking for the misplaced food. Other times, he found himself giving step-by-step directions to confused deliverers who, it seemed, were just as annoyed as he.
“What started as frustration turned into a mission to fix one of the most overlooked problems in the supply chain, the final stretch of the last mile,” he told TechCrunch. He started studying the delivery supply chain, ran deliveries himself, and decided during his senior year in college to go all in on the problem.
He teamed up with his friend Sheel Patel and launched Doorstep to help with delivery tracking. Murarka, who is CEO, said that standard GPS works wonders outdoors, but fails inside buildings, which creates a blind spot for deliverers.
Doorstep integrates into existing delivery apps and then, using phone sensors, tracks when a driver has entered a building, gone up an elevator, and made it to the desired doorstep.
This data is given to the delivery platform in which the driver works, like Uber Eats or DoorDash, and then can be used to automate dispute resolution and properly validate deliveries, essentially ending the drama behind missing food and blurry proof-of-delivery photos. Murarka said the company doesn’t collect driver or user information and that it maintains “the same privacy and security standards platforms already have in place.”
