One day, Shashwat Murarka sat in his college apartment thinking about his relationship with food delivery. Sometimes, the order never arrived, and he had to wander through his apartment building, looking for the misplaced food. Other times, he found himself giving step-by-step directions to confused deliverers who, it seemed, were just as annoyed as he.
“What started as frustration turned into a mission to fix one of the most overlooked problems in the supply chain, the final stretch of the last mile,” he told TechCrunch. He started studying the delivery supply chain, ran deliveries himself, and decided during his senior year in college to go all in on the problem.
He teamed up with his friend Sheel Patel and launched Doorstep to help with delivery tracking. Murarka, who is CEO, said that standard GPS works wonders outdoors, but fails inside buildings, which creates a blind spot for deliverers.
Doorstep integrates into existing delivery apps and then, using phone sensors, tracks when a driver has entered a building, gone up an elevator, and made it to the desired doorstep.
This data is given to the delivery platform in which the driver works, like Uber Eats or DoorDash, and then can be used to automate dispute resolution and properly validate deliveries, essentially ending the drama behind missing food and blurry proof-of-delivery photos. Murarka said the company doesn’t collect driver or user information and that it maintains “the same privacy and security standards platforms already have in place.”
“Our technology gives customer support teams the visibility they’ve been missing, providing real-time, verifiable data on what actually happens inside buildings to resolve refunds automatically,” Murarka said. “Solving that blind spot unlocks enormous value for platforms, drivers, merchants, and customers alike.”
On Thursday, the company announced an $8 million seed round led by Canaan Partners. Murarka described fundraising as “relentless,” and said he actually slept in the office of the accelerator Antler when he first moved to New York.
“Every step has been about funding the earliest believer,” he continued. “The people who don’t just want to watch the journey but want to be part of it and stay the course.”
He said Doorstep raised this round in about a week and that he met their lead investor at Canaan through network connections. Others in this round include Antler, Cercano Management, Cassius, and Sean Henry, a scout at Kleiner Perkins. Murarka said the fresh capital will be used to move the technology from pilot to full production. He’s also looking to hire in engineering and product.
Murarka considers the company’s competitors to be other hardware-based solutions, like standard building sensors, lockers, and cameras. “Hardware is expensive and slow to scale, while GPS simply doesn’t work indoors,” he said. The company is already active in all U.S. states, though it declined to share customers’ names.
Murarka hopes his company can end the pain associated with a missing food delivery.
“For me, this isn’t just about stopping fraud or refunds. It’s about rebuilding trust between platforms and customers and between drivers and the work they do,” he said. “Drivers are the backbone of delivery platforms, and having experienced those challenges ourselves, we hope to make their work easier through Doorstep.”