Sellers ask 'which courier is best' as if it's a reputation question — it's a geography question. Delhivery might own your Delhi–Mumbai lanes while Xpressbees beats it to tier-3 Rajasthan. The answer exists per lane; here's how to build yours.
The 80/20 lane map
Pull 90 days of orders by destination. You'll find 10–20 lanes carrying most of your volume — 'Jaipur → Delhi', 'Jaipur → Mumbai', 'Jaipur → Lucknow'. For those lanes, get per-courier quotes and check your delivery-time data. That's your map.
What 'best' means on a lane
Three inputs: price (per-zone slab on the card or live rate), transit (your actual delivered-days data on that lane, not their promised TAT), and COD remittance on COD lanes. Score each carrier per lane — a simple sheet works.
The fallback assignment
For the long tail — the pincodes you ship rarely — a default carrier plus a known fallback covers it. The lane map matters for volume; the tail just needs reliability.
The lazy version that works
Per-order quoting does the lane math automatically — every order quotes the panel and you pick. The manual lane map is the annual-negotiation version; the quote screen is the per-order version. Use both.
Pakka Parcel automates exactly this — the pipeline from order to AWB without the manual steps.
See how →The playbook
Pull orders by destination
Last 90 days → top lanes carrying your volume.
Get per-carrier quotes per lane
The price map for the lanes that matter.
Add your delivery-time data
Their TAT is theory; your data is truth.
Set defaults + fallback
Volume lanes get a choice; the tail gets a default.
