Start-Ups Rise As New Competitors For The Established Firms


BANGALORE: The Indian e-commerce industry is no doubt one of the fastest growing sectors across the country in case of electronics and lifestyle goods. However, the game is completely in an inverted state when it came to grocery. Such observation was made by Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar who were in fetch for a business idea then.

Dhindsa, former Head of International operations at Zomato said "The experience of a customer buying a lot of groceries online is not that great.”

In 2013, Dhindsa and Kumar, who were ex-colleagues, confounded their online hyper local grocery start up called Grofers.

If seen at present, in 2015, Grofers along with its peers like PepperTap, ZopNow and LocalBanya belongs to India’s hottest e-commerce segment. However, pioneering in this industry is Bigbasket, the first online comprehensive grocery store of India operating in five leading cities.

Down the line, groceries and household staples forms the last challenge to India’s online retail sector. The probable reasons for this layback can be the stock keeping, storage and delivery of the perishable goods.

Karan Mehrotra, Chief executive of Local Banya, which sources and delivers from local grocers comments, “You have to set up the right kind of infrastructure for cold chain products and fresh produce, which are temperature-sensitive. You also have to get across enough range and rates to make sure you can deliver all the products to consumers.”

Founded in 2011, Bangalore based BigBasket, one of the leaders in the business recently declared partnership with 1800 local stores across the country in order to deliver fresh vegetables within an hour of online order from customer.

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