Ola is cashing in on the booming $5-billion quick commerce market and has made a slew of announcements that will put it in direct competition with incumbents like Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto. With the new set of offerings, Ola will also challenge Flipkart Minutes, which was launched by the Walmart-owned company earlier this month.
Ola’s entry into quick commerce comes at a time when the market is growing at a rapid pace. The sector has gone from good to have in 2021 to an indispensable one now, according to analysts at UBS. Businesses like Blinkit have become an integral part to Zomato’s growth journey as highlighted by the company management and analysts several times in the past months. Zepto too is growing at a blistering pace and has reached a deal to raise $1 billion in a span of 50-60 days which underscores investor confidence in the space, Moneycontrol had reported earlier.
The three-and-a-half year-old industry is constantly evolving and players are toying with different ideas to improve efficiency. Ola’s chief Bhavish Aggarwal is no different.
While players like Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, Zepto have so far employed humans to process orders within dark stores, Ola’s Aggarwal wants to shake things up by deploying robots who will ready orders for dispatch.
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“We have built tech that makes warehousing completely automated…(it will) completely change the state of warehousing with robot-first warehousing,” Aggarwal said while speaking at the Ola 'Sankalp' event on August 15.
"These robots will not get tired, deliver in time and this is the dark store of the future," he added.
A dark store is typically a 2,500-3,500 square feet warehouse in and around residential areas. It is the nerve centre of quick commerce, an industry where time is of the essence.
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Ola’s dark store play is slightly different, though. Ola’s dark store will be a container, fully manufactured and is volume heavy. There is no need for space/aisles for humans.
Automating dark store operations will cut order processing time from around four minutes to under one minute, Aggarwal claimed. To be sure, all quick commerce players are already cutting down order processing time to around two minutes thanks to a maturing market.
Quick commerce has matured largely because of wider assortments. Ola’s chief said the company’s dark stores will allow participants to store up to 6,250 units, up from about 2,085 units currently. Again, companies SKUs are expanding as players push to increase average order values (AOVs).
Ola is not restricting the use of its dark stores. "These dark stores will be available for all kiranas and brands on ONDC and not just for Ola," Aggarwal said.
Ola had earlier integrated on ONDC and restarted food delivery after unsuccessful attempts in the past.
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