Everyone is talking about exporting through the marketplace. About how easy it is now to sell your products in Brazil or India. I pressed the button and your product is already in the customer's basket thousands of kilometers away. It sounds beautiful. But there is a whole gap between this button and the moment when the buyer receives his parcel. The name of this chasm is logistics for e-commerce.
This market is, of course, gigantic. Analysts promise that it will grow from $85 billion this year to $210 billion by 2033. The numbers excite the imagination. But all this growth, all this burden falls on the shoulders of those who have to physically deliver millions of parcels. And in the BRICS countries, this is, to put it mildly, not a trivial task.
Brazil.
Let's start with Brazil. The largest e-commerce market in Latin America. The main player is Mercado Livre. And the main problem is the country itself. 8.5 million square kilometers. It's not just a big country. These are mountains, jungles, huge megacities and endless wastelands in between.
How does B2C delivery work here?
- Mail (Correios).The good old mail. She still accounts for the lion's share of deliveries, simply because she is the only one who has at least some kind of network across the country.
- Couriers.In cities like Sao Paulo and Rio, yes, there's nowhere without them. Motorcyclists scurrying through traffic jams are already part of the landscape.
- Same-day delivery.This is generally a luxury available only in the largest cities.
The main problem is the infrastructure. As soon as you leave the developed southeast, the good roads end. Delivery to remote areas of the Amazon can take more than a week. So when you read that Mercado Livre is investing 23 billion reais in logistics and building 21 distribution centers across the country, it's not from a good life. This is just an attempt to somehow cover this vast territory and shorten the delivery time. They're trying to build their own postal system because the state-owned one can't handle it.
Russia.
In Russia, the problem is similar — it's huge distances. 11-time zones. But the climate is also added to this. Delivering a parcel by courier to a Siberian village in winter is economic suicide.
Therefore, we have adopted a different model. The logistics of the BRICS marketplaces in Russia are, first of all, pick—up points (PVZ) and postamates. Ozon, Wildberries — all these platforms in BRICS are built not so much by courier services as by networks of points where people can come for their orders themselves. About 70% of all parcels in the country are picked up this way.
Courier delivery, of course, is available. But this is mainly for Moscow, St. Petersburg and other millionaires. Payment upon receipt is also very popular with us. People, especially in the regions, do not trust online payments. They want to see the product first, and then give the money. And this creates additional difficulties for logistics: you need to organize cash collection and work with cash.
India.
India is a different story altogether. The market is growing at a furious pace. The number of online shoppers is expected to grow from 100 million to 350 million in a few years. Imagine this volume.
The main problem here is not so much the distance as the density and diversity. Thousands of zip codes, second- and third-level cities, and rural areas with very different accessibility.
- Home delivery is standard here. Flipkart, through its logistics division Ekart, covers more than 14,000 zip codes and manages to deliver more than 10 million parcels per month.
- Payment upon receipt (Cash on Delivery) is also very popular here due to the low penetration of credit cards.
- Reverse logistics.Indians like to return goods. Therefore, any logistics company should have a well-established system of refunds and exchanges.
It is impossible to cope with such a volume without technology. Ekart and other companies are actively using AI to optimize routes in order to somehow sort out this chaos.
China.
But China is another planet. It is the largest e-commerce market in the world. In 2024, they processed about 174.5 billion parcels. Just think about this figure. This is more than half of the global volume.
Here, logistics for e-commerce is no longer about couriers on bicycles.
- Alibaba's Cainiao network is not just a delivery service. It is a smart platform that integrates hundreds of logistics companies, optimizes routes and manages the entire process. Their standard is 24-hour delivery within China.
- Drones and robots.com is already making full use of drones and automated vehicles to deliver to remote rural areas, where it takes a long time and is expensive for a person to get there.
- Pick-up points (Cainiao Stations)There are also some, but they operate as high-tech hubs.
Even they have problems. For example, it is still difficult to provide fast delivery to villages in the mountains. But the level of development of their infrastructure and technology is simply not comparable with other BRICS countries. If you look at the Logistics Efficiency Index (LPI), China has 3.61, and Russia, for example, 2.76. These are not just numbers. This is the difference between an autobahn and a country road.
South Africa.
The South African market is growing, but it is very contrasting. In big cities like Johannesburg or Cape Town, everything is more or less fine. But outside of them, the quality of infrastructure is plummeting.
The main player, Takealot, is trying to solve this problem by building large distribution centers and opening pick-up points. But the main complaint of customers is reliability. Late deliveries and unpredictable deadlines are common. People here prefer home delivery, about 70% choose this method. But it is still not possible to ensure its stable quality throughout the country.
Let's summarize the results?
It turns out that the logistics of the BRICS marketplaces is a patchwork quilt. Each country has its own problems and unique solutions. Some rely on technology and drones, and others rely on a dense network of cheap pick-up points.
But there is something in common. All major players understand that they cannot survive in this market without their own powerful logistics networks. They invest billions in warehouses, transportation, and IT systems. Because ultimately, in e-commerce, you're not just selling a product. You're selling the experience. And this experience begins from the moment of ordering and ends only when the package is in the hands of the customer. Just in time. And in one piece.
If you plan to export through the marketplace, your main task is to find a partner who understands all these local nuances. Because a mistake in logistics can cost you not only money, but also your reputation. And it will be much more difficult to get her back.
