Wholesalers and large retailers are pushing ahead with their digitisation plans to service customers who are increasingly ordering daily essentials online in the wake of the lockdown, which has been extended to May 3.
Offline retail giants such as Big Bazaar are building omnichannel models to deliver essential goods and groceries during the coronavirus lockdown, the Economic Times reported.
For example, Future Group, which provided online orders for groceries only at its Easy Day stores in Delhi-NCR, has now extended this facility to 250 Big Bazaar outlets across India via BigBazaar.com, Bharati Balakrishnan, senior VP, digital commerce, Future Group told the paper.
“We are running online wherever we are allowed to operate stores. We were able to launch BigBazaar.com within 10 days and since then we’ve scaled it to about 10,000 orders a day,” Balakrishnan added.
Their website and phone ordering services, which account for 30 percent of the sales currently, are also clearing Amazon orders and are working with local delivery platforms such as Dunzo and Shadowfax to boost delivery strength, the report said.
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Kolkata-based Spencer’s Retail has partnered with Swiggy, Uber and Rapido to deliver orders placed on its website. It has also partnered with Flipkart to broaden ts reach and service out of store (OOS) orders.
“Our OOS business has gone from low single-digit to double digits, thanks to e-commerce and phone orders,” Devendra Chawla, CEO of Spencer’s Retail, told the newspaper.
Metro Cash and Carry India, which recently entered the Indian market, has rolled out its mobile app facilities across the country, despite the original plan being for only a pilot in Bengaluru. MD Arvind Mediratta told ET they had already get over 100 online orders from traders per store across India.
The government has been pushing for e-commerce companies to work with local stores and kiranas to ensure doorstep supply of essentials.
E-commerce platforms have been asked to collaborate with local stores and the home ministry in its guidelines for lockdown 2.0 has included the sector in the “essential services” list.
Find other stories related to MHA guidelines on Lockdown 2.0 here
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