I’m one of the co-founders of Loomon Fulfillment Services. We’re building a B2B distributed fulfillment + inventory management network across India for small and mid-sized D2C / online sellers who sell PAN-India but can’t afford to run multiple warehouses.

I’m posting here to get real feedback from operators, founders, supply chain people, and anyone who has lived through D2C logistics pain—especially EDD → RTO → cashflow death spirals.

What we’re building (in simple terms)

We’ll set up regional warehouses / dark stores in strategic hubs so D2C brands can store inventory closer to demand without CAPEX or operational burden.

Phase 1 city: Guwahati
Then expanding to hubs like: Bangalore, Srinagar, Bhopal (and other logical clusters)

The idea is:

Brands send us inventory in bulk We store + manage it We fulfill orders from the nearest warehouse Faster delivery + lower shipping + lower RTO + faster inventory rotation

The problems we’re trying to solve

1) High delivery time (EDD) → high RTO risk → inventory blocked

Example that’s extremely common:

A seller ships from Surat and receives an order from Manipur

Current EDD: ~7 days If it becomes RTO, inventory can remain blocked for ~14 days (forward + return)

Our approach:
Stock the inventory in a Guwahati warehouse

Guwahati → Manipur delivery: 2–3 days Lower EDD → lower RTO probability → faster inventory rotation

This is not just “better CX”. For many brands, this becomes survival vs shutdown because cashflow gets stuck in transit.

2) High logistics cost for long-lane shipping

Continuing the same route example:

Surat → Manipur: ₹200–₹250/shipment Guwahati → Manipur: ₹100–₹120/shipment

Regional fulfillment = immediate cost reduction per order, which improves margins and competitiveness.

3) Small brands can’t afford regional fulfillment infrastructure

Most small/mid D2C sellers can’t open warehouses in:
Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Guwahati, etc.

We enable multi-city presence without CAPEX — they pay for space/handling/fulfillment as they scale.

4) “Quick commerce gap” for D2C brands

Consumer behavior is shifting to faster delivery expectations.

But current quick commerce options:

Take 20–25% margin (often kills profitability) Require upfront onboarding/registration fees Limited to select cities Brands lose control and flexibility

Our bet: Give D2C brands the ability to offer:

Same-day delivery within a city cluster (dark store model) Next-day delivery within nearby states With their own dedicated inventory space inside our network

Long-term vision: a distribution platform for D2C sellers, where they can hold inventory in multiple hubs and deliver fast without sacrificing margins.

Who we think this is for

D2C brands selling PAN-India doing (say) 50–5000 orders/day (range flexible) Brands with high RTO lanes (NE states, J&K, etc.) Brands currently shipping mostly from 1–2 origin cities Brands suffering from: high EDD high RTO high per-shipment cost poor inventory rotation

What we need feedback on (please be direct)

A) Is this actually painful enough to pay for?

If you run/ran a D2C brand: would you pay for a service like this? What pricing model feels acceptable?

B) What’s the “must-have” stack for trust?

What would you require before moving inventory to us?

WMS visibility? SLAs on dispatch? Insurance / damage liability? Real-time stock sync with Shopify/WooCommerce/Unicommerce? COD reconciliation?

C) Biggest execution risks you see

I’m aware fulfillment is operationally brutal. Where do you think this fails?

Demand forecasting? Inventory fragmentation? Reverse logistics? Warehouse unit economics? Partner courier dependencies?

D) Where should we start?

We chose Guwahati first because NE lanes cause major EDD/RTO issues.
Is that the right wedge, or would you start elsewhere?