As the cases of patients testing positive for the deadly novel coronavirus continues to rise in India, panic shopping has been increasing too. Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself appealing people not to hoard essentials and deprive others of them, thousands of Indians are stocking up provisions in bulk.
This behaviour has been fuelled by fears of the coronavirus pandemic slipping into stage three in India, in which a nationwide lockdown may be in the offing to contain further spread of the virus.
This trend of shopping has affected the delivery efficiency of online grocery store BigBasket, reported the Live Mint.
Recently, when a resident of Kolkata ordered groceries in bulk from BigBasket within a few days of hoarding supplies for a month, she was informed that her consignment would take two to four days to be delivered. Usually, Big Basket delivers in about 12 hours, but due to this worrying trend of panic shopping, several online orders were cancelled or delayed.
According to the report, BigBasket is finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the sudden increase in orders. Staples products such as flour and milk are flying off the shelves in no time, not just on BigBasket but also on rival online grocery shop Grofers.
To tackle the acute supply crunch of essentials, BigBasket has resorted to altering its procurement process.
Commenting on this, BigBasket’s buying and merchandising national head Seshu Kumar Tirumala said: “Order volumes have almost doubled in the last two weeks alone… We are trying to predict demand for each item that is going out of stock…There are 2-3 SKUs (stock-keeping units) that go out of stock on a daily basis like hand sanitizers, and other kinds of hand wash items, and third is basic staples like rice, dal, etc.”
According to him, it takes longer to replenish the stock of hand sanitisers and handwashes. However, the basic staples are restocked within 12 hours.
Meanwhile, industry experts are predicting that consumers would gradually shift to using hyper-local aggregators like Swiggy Stores and Dunzo to buy their grocery if the likes of BigBasket are unable to bridge the sudden demand-supply gap.
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