Illustration by Siddhant Jumde
On March 22, when the country went into a lockdown, life came to a standstill. The fear of contracting the virus forced people to stay indoors and as they wondered how to replenish their grocery or other emergency needs such as medicines, delivery boys of Dunzo, Swiggy and Zomato came as godsend. They took orders and delivered in less than an hour. I never felt so happy seeing the Dunzo delivery boy knocking on my door as I did on the very next day of the lockdown when I urgently needed some medicines, says Mumbai-based graphic designer Arati Mehta. This was the time when the most-dependent kirana stores found it difficult to deliver as their staff had stopped coming to work. Neither could e-commerce giants such as Amazon, Flipkart and BigBasket find their way into people s homes as supply chain mechanisms had come to a grinding halt.