Pune-based Dispatch Network has raised Rs 5 crore in a pre-seed funding round led by Antler India. Angel investors Krishi Fagwani, founder of Thrive, Yashin Mahadevia and Parth Modwadhia also took part in the round, which was announced on 2 November 2026.
The company will use the fresh capital to expand the artificial intelligence team behind its proprietary Large Logistics Spatio-Temporal Model, known as LLSTM. The model is designed as a foundation model for intracity logistics and mobility, and it sits at the centre of how Dispatch runs its delivery network.
Dispatch runs a fleet of delivery riders who carry orders for food delivery and quick commerce platforms. Its system decides which order each rider should take next and where that rider should wait for the order after that, with the aim of cutting the distance riders travel without an order.
That empty distance is the problem Dispatch is trying to solve. The company says riders can spend up to half of their kilometres without an order, while still paying for fuel and wear on every one of those kilometres.
On its own website, Dispatch describes LLSTM as a system that matches every order and every rider in a city at once. It forecasts demand across parts of the city, moves free riders toward places where orders are expected, and tests changes in a simulation before they reach riders.
A model that learns from every delivery
Most of the world’s deliveries still run on rules someone wrote by hand. We’re building the decision layer for last-mile delivery: which order, which rider, and where they should be next. Pune is our training ground, and every delivery makes the model sharper.
The quote above is from Navneeth Kannan, co-founder for product and artificial intelligence at Dispatch Network. The point is that each decision becomes training data for the next one, and Dispatch says the model learns from a minute-by-minute view of the city rather than from text.
Unlike fleets that let riders choose which order to accept, Dispatch assigns every order to a specific rider. The company says this approach leads to better sequencing and fewer empty miles, because work is planned across several platforms instead of being handled one order at a time.
Fast growth in Pune, and a much bigger target
Dispatch went live in Pune in June 2026 and says it has completed more than 100,000 deliveries since then. Monthly volumes rose from 3,014 in June to 55,000 in October, and the network now handles around 3,500 deliveries each day.
Its next goal is 50,000 orders a day across five cities. Mumbai is due to launch in November 2026 as its second city, and that expansion will test whether the model can learn a new city as quickly as it learned Pune.
Dispatch already delivers for Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto, Instamart and BigBasket. It also works with restaurants and stores through direct APIs and the Open Network for Digital Commerce, which gives it demand from more than one kind of platform.
The company reports that its model has reduced empty kilometres by two-thirds. It also says riders earn around 55 percent more per month than the industry average, with rider retention 80 percent higher than the industry average.
Founders with a mobility background
Dispatch was co-founded in 2023 by Rajit Arya and Navneeth Kannan, and it is operated by Artem Network Private Limited. Arya, the chief executive, has worked in electric mobility since 2009 and has spent the past five years working with delivery riders.
Kannan leads product and artificial intelligence, and brings a decade of experience in mobility systems as a product architect and engineer. That mix of rider-facing experience and systems engineering is central to the bet Antler India is making here.
Why Antler India backed the round
Antler India invests at the pre-seed stage, often backing founders before conventional metrics are in place. Its India residency began in 2022, and Antler says it has backed 80 startups in India through its earliest stage programmes.
The test for Dispatch is scale. A target of 50,000 orders a day is roughly 14 times its current daily volume, so the Mumbai launch will show whether the model improves as fast in a new city as it has in Pune.
For now, Dispatch has a clear and measurable pitch. It is not selling more riders, but fewer wasted kilometres, and that is a difference riders can feel in their monthly earnings.
