Quick deliveries won't happen at the cost of safety: Grofer's Albinder Dhindsa

Grofers, which has been working on reducing its grocery delivery time from 15 to 10 minutes, on August 27 assured that the service won't happen at the cost of safety. The company further said its stores are widely spread across the cities they operate in, hence, there shouldn't be an issue in fast delivery of items.

"Our network of stores are so widely spread across cities that we have a store live almost every two kilometers," said Albinder Dhindsa, co-founder and chief executive of Grofers in a blog soon after concerns were raised by the industry on the safety of riders and people on the street owing to the pressure of fast deliveries.

"The average delivery speed for our fleet is 10kmph which is possible only due to the efficiency of our systems and cluster of stores, coupled with our in-house technology. Our delivery partners connect the dots – between the stores and the customers – in the safest way possible," he added.

The company also said it delivers within 15 minutes, to over 20,000 customers across 10 cities, every day.

However, interestingly nowhere in the blog did Dhinsa mention his earlier announced 10 minutes timeline.

Earlier this month, he had said that the company would be able to deliver groceries in 10 minutes for the majority of the customers within the next 45 days.

Grofers is offering customers 7,000 items of daily essentials in Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Jaipur, Ghaziabad, Noida, and Lucknow.

It just raised a $100 million round from online food delivery firm Zomato and also became a unicorn with a valuation exceeding a little more than a billion dollars.

Last month, Grofers claimed it made 7,000, 15-minute deliveries in a single day.

Also read: Express grocery delivery: How far will it go this time?

Swiggy, which was present only in Bengaluru and Gurugram since almost a year of its launch, has now expanded Instamart also to Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Noida.

As per a recent survey by Reedseer, quick commerce is expected to grow 10-15-fold in the next five years to become a $5 billion opportunity by 2025.

Other companies to have entered this space include names like BigBasket and Zomato.