Amazon India, Flipkart Intends to Expand its Grocery Business

By siliconindia  |  Thursday, 15 October 2020, 11:52:02 AM IST

Amazon India, Flipkart Intends to Expand its Grocery Business

The fast-paced growth of e-grocery has drawn the e-commerce giants Flipkart and Amazon India to upgrade their grocery business by expanding it across more cities and satellite towns, fresh investment, and more warehousing space. Prevailing online grocery purchases has spurred the business of online grocery firms such as BigBasket, JioMart, and more.

Thus, Flipkart Supermart has intended to expand its business which is currently restricted to just five cities and satellite towns to another four-five city in the months to come. It is also planning to escalate its presence to 15-16 satellite towns.

A few days back, Walmart and Flipkart had jointly invested about $30 million in Ninjacart, a fresh produce supply chain startup for the second time. This investment is expected to further lift up Flipkart’s online grocery business.

In an interview, Manish Kumar, Senior Vice-President-grocery, Flipkart states, “Grocery is the next big frontier for online shopping and is instrumental for us to bring customers online. We have made significant investments in the grocery business. Gearing up for the peak demand season, we have scaled up the grocery category and revamped warehousing capability."

Manish further continued that the e-grocery business has its own challenges and brings in tasking operations. This business requires adequate cold storage and last-mile delivery processes as the brand is looking forward to expanding its operation across various cities.

According to the RedSeer reports, the e-grocery market in India is expected to grow from $1.9 billion in 2019 to $3 billion in the year-end. Further, the market growth is rising at a rate of 57 percent and it’s further estimated to touch $18.2 billion by 2024.

Being launched last year, Amazon Fresh has scaled up rapidly and its service is presently available to customers across nine cities and is expected in Kolkata, Pune, and Ahmedabad shortly.

Amazon Fresh provides a wide range of 5,500 fruits and vegetables, personal care, packages food, dairy, and dry grocery supplies and the delivery services are also available for just two-hour.

Siddharth Nambiar, Director – Category Management, Amazon India says, “Our mission is to make online grocery shopping rewarding, fast, convenient and safe for our customers through various programs like Amazon Fresh and Pantry. We are consistently widening our selection of daily essentials making them available for customers throughout the country with our growing infrastructure capacities. We will soon make Amazon Fresh available to customers in more cities."

 

 

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