Rewriting the Rules of Digital Commerce: The Anchanto Way
- By Winston Thomas
- January 12, 2025

In the dog-eat-dog world of e-commerce software, where venture capital-backed startups looks to crack large enterprise companies’ hold, Anchanto stands apart. The Singapore-based company has quietly built a formidable presence across 30 markets by doing something radical: letting its customers become its shareholders and drive its innovation agenda.
“95% of shareholders’ investment in Anchanto actually comes from our customers,” says Vaibhav Dabhade, the company's founder and chief executive officer. “Every time I wanted to raise money… I go to my customers.”
The unconventional approach has given Anchanto something most of its competitors lack: deep, practical insights into the real challenges facing e-commerce businesses across diverse markets, from cross-docking operations to last-mile delivery optimization.
These deep insights are crucial as the e-commerce landscape goes through a fundamental shift. The pandemic-driven growth spurt has cooled, and businesses are no longer chasing digital transformation for its own sake.
“We’re at a crossroads,” Dabhade explains. “It’s no more a discussion about whether you have an e-commerce website or sell online. That phase is gone. It’s now about what percentage of my revenue is digital and what percentage of my margin is digital.”
This shift has exposed the limitations of one-size-fits-all e-commerce platforms, particularly in warehouse management systems (WMS) and order management systems (OMS). Some brands have become victims of their digital success, like Nike, which recently appointed a new CEO after their aggressive digital push inadvertently undermined their physical retail presence and traditional distribution channels.
Honing the local edge in a global market
Anchanto's approach to this challenge is refreshingly old-school. Rather than pushing a standardized global solution or promising AI makeovers, the company has taken inspiration from an unlikely source: Bata. This old-school Czech shoe company so successfully localized its operations that many customers believe it's a homegrown brand in their respective countries.
“I want to build the next Bata,” Dabhade declares. This philosophy manifests in Anchanto’s commitment to building local teams that speak the language and understand the nuances of each market. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, this means grappling with unique logistics challenges where an address might not be a standard street address — a nightmare for traditional route optimization and delivery management systems.
Anchanto’s product development strategy reflects this ground-up approach. The company’s six SaaS products are designed to be highly configurable, accommodating dramatic differences in market requirements. For example, the WMS supports everything from basic pick-to-light systems to advanced wave-picking strategies, while the OMS handles complex cross-border fulfillment scenarios.
In Indonesia, for example, warehouse staff often share scanners and mobile terminals due to cost constraints, while U.K. customers demand full traceability with dedicated devices for each picker and packer. The system accommodates both scenarios while maintaining inventory accuracy and pick rates.
This attention to local detail extends to compliance and data management. The company offers private cloud deployments for markets with strict data residency requirements and maintains GDPR compliance, PDPA adherence, and ISO 27001 certification. External auditors ensure regional compliance, while regular penetration testing ensures security standards are maintained across all fulfillment nodes.
Prediction trumps insights
Anchanto’s evolution beyond basic analytics and traditional warehouse KPIs keeps it ahead in the crowded e-commerce software market. “Everybody gives insights — it’s become a commodity,” Dabhade notes. Instead, Anchanto has shifted its focus to prediction. “Our point of view is no more ‘What’s the insight?’ but ‘What can you predict?’”
This predictive approach leverages the company’s massive dataset of annual orders to help customers simulate promotional outcomes and optimize inventory management. The system can predict stockouts, recommend optimal slotting strategies, and anticipate labor requirements for upcoming peak periods. Unlike many competitors who sprinkle AI buzzwords liberally in their marketing, Anchanto takes a pragmatic approach, focusing on practical machine learning applications that deliver tangible improvements in pick accuracy, throughput and inventory turns.
Perhaps Anchanto’s most significant differentiator is its deep understanding of logistics. “We’re a five-year-old tech company with seven years of logistics heritage,” Dabhade explains. This background has proven crucial as e-commerce logistics grows increasingly complex, with requirements ranging from cross-docking operations to value-added services (VAS) and returns processing.
The company has helped traditional B2B logistics providers pivot to e-commerce fulfillment, enabling them to handle new challenges like TikTok shop order bursts that require rapid putaway and same-day shipping capabilities. Their WMS supports various picking methodologies — from basic discrete picking to advanced cluster picking and zone picking strategies — allowing 3PLs to optimize their operations based on order profiles and facility layouts.
Building for the omnichannel future
As the e-commerce market matures, Anchanto’s bet on omnichannel capabilities is paying off. The company's deep relationships with retail leaders have informed its product development, resulting in solutions that bridge the digital-physical divide effectively, from distributed order management to real-time inventory visibility across multiple nodes.
“We believe that everything will eventually integrate digital with physical,” Dabhade says. This vision, combined with the company’s emphasis on practical usability and deep market understanding, has helped Anchanto become a top player in several established markets.
In an industry prone to chasing the next big thing, Anchanto’s success suggests that sometimes the best innovation comes from listening to your customers — or, better yet, making them your shareholders. It might just be what the industry needs to optimize the entire supply chain, from first mile to last mile.
Image credit: iStockphoto/gorodenkoff
Winston Thomas
Winston Thomas is the editor-in-chief of CDOTrends. He likes to piece together the weird and wondering tech puzzle for readers and identify groundbreaking business models led by tech while waiting for the singularity.