Storyboard18 | Is Grofers rebranding as Blinkit a blink and miss it?

Albinder Dhindsa, CEO and Founder, Blinkit (previously Grofers).

Delivery startup Grofers has rebranded as BlinkIt as it eyes a share of India’s fast-growing quick commerce or q-commerce market.

In a blog post, Albinder Dhindsa, founder and chief executive officer, Blinkit, said that a few months ago, the company started on a journey to build the future of commerce with 10-minute delivery of most of the stuff customers need in their daily lives. The company claims to have already processed over a million orders a week, across 12 cities in India.

“We learnt a lot as Grofers, and all our learnings, our team, and our infrastructure is being repurposed to pivot to something with staggering product-market fit – quick commerce. Today, we are surging ahead as a new company, and we have a new mission statement – “instant commerce indistinguishable from magic”. And we will no longer be doing this as Grofers – we will be doing it as Blinkit,” he said.

Grofers, in which Zomato already has a strategic stake, competes with Swiggy’s Instamart, BigBasket, Dunzo and Zepto.

Blink and miss

Design and branding experts Storyboard18 spoke to say that while the ‘Blinkit’ conveys the company’s focus on quick commerce and not-just-groceries, the logo lacks the agility of a q-commerce company.

Nisha Singhania, director and co-founder of Infectious Advertising, says that Blinkit as a name is interesting and cues what the new company is trying to do, which is instant deliveries.

“The logo is very clean and no-fuss, but one misses the vibrant orange of the Grofers logo. The green perhaps is there to cue sustainability,” she says.

Singhania is quick to add that every time a brand changes its name and identity, it loses out on the equity it has built so far with the earlier name.

“There will need to be an effort to establish the change and more importantly why the change and what the consumers should expect,” she adds.

Yellow yellow happy fellow?

Shekhar Badve, founder director, Lokusdesign, says that while the name Blinkit is aligned with the company’s objective, the erstwhile brand Grofers will have to do a lot of handholding in terms of brand perception and image versus their competition such as platforms like BigBasket.

“The logo doesn’t seem like a company which is based on agility, dynamism and speed. They have used a happy colour like yellow predominantly but to my mind a better colour palette would have been red/vermillion/orange which are more dynamic,” he says.

Badve further notes that using multiple colours in the logo would have helped to convey the agility.

“The company could have also used a logo/symbol that connotes agility or speed that they are trying to convey. This symbol could have been used across web and phone apps,” he says.

Grofers, which raised around $120 million from Zomato earlier this year, has Japan’s Softbank as its largest shareholder with 50% share.

To be sure, India’s quick commerce market is set to touch $5 billion by 2025 from $0.3 billion currently, according to data from Redseer. The segment has already attracted  a host of companies, including Zepto and players such as Grofer’s old rival, Tata-backed Big Basket, which has plans to open 800 brick-and-mortar stores.

Also read: 'They are unrecognisable': Inside the ‘new’ SoftBank India of 2021