Indian e-commerce leader Flipkart, which is currently fighting out an intense battle with global e-commerce player Amazon for a significant share for the $30 billion Indian e-commerce market, is pulling all stops to remain at the top of the game. It's latest effort in this direction is re-entering the country's grocery segment. Yesterday, Flipkart announced that it has undertaken a pilot programme for the same in its home city Bengaluru.
In April, we shared how Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy at the TiE event in New Delhi revealed his company's plans of entering the grocery market in India. He had said, “Yes we will get into grocery… 80 per cent of units bought in India is grocery… $400-600 million is grocery market, so we have to get into it."
Flipkart first entered the Indian grocery market in late 2015. It had launched its separate groceries ordering app called Nearby for delivering fruits, vegetables, soaps and other staples from supermarkets to customers. Following a poor response, the app, which was operational only in certain regions of Bangalore, was shutdown within 5 months of going live.
The performance of the pilot programme in Bengaluru will determine if Flipkart will expand the programme in other parts of the country. At a recent event in Bengaluru, Anil Goteti head of marketplace, Flipkart did confirm that the homegrown e-commerce player is planning to launch the grocery service shortly but didn't reveal a particular date for the launch.
He said, "We will be opening up groceries very very innovatively when we launch...The pilot is going on in Bengaluru. We will be launching it (groceries) in few months time."
According to Goteti, the company is also considering launching more pilots on grocery across different cities in the country. He believes that Flipkart will be able to distinguish themselves from others in the market as it's coming up something very innovative and has some very unique propositions that Indian grocery market currently doesn't have.
Flipkart, which currently enjoys a customer base of 100 million users plans on increasing the number to 500 million customers in the coming years. The company, which is in its tenth year of operation, is currently hosting a number of activities to celebrate the joyous occasion.
In April, we shared how Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy at the TiE event in New Delhi revealed his company's plans of entering the grocery market in India. He had said, “Yes we will get into grocery… 80 per cent of units bought in India is grocery… $400-600 million is grocery market, so we have to get into it."
Flipkart first entered the Indian grocery market in late 2015. It had launched its separate groceries ordering app called Nearby for delivering fruits, vegetables, soaps and other staples from supermarkets to customers. Following a poor response, the app, which was operational only in certain regions of Bangalore, was shutdown within 5 months of going live.
The performance of the pilot programme in Bengaluru will determine if Flipkart will expand the programme in other parts of the country. At a recent event in Bengaluru, Anil Goteti head of marketplace, Flipkart did confirm that the homegrown e-commerce player is planning to launch the grocery service shortly but didn't reveal a particular date for the launch.
He said, "We will be opening up groceries very very innovatively when we launch...The pilot is going on in Bengaluru. We will be launching it (groceries) in few months time."
According to Goteti, the company is also considering launching more pilots on grocery across different cities in the country. He believes that Flipkart will be able to distinguish themselves from others in the market as it's coming up something very innovative and has some very unique propositions that Indian grocery market currently doesn't have.
Flipkart, which currently enjoys a customer base of 100 million users plans on increasing the number to 500 million customers in the coming years. The company, which is in its tenth year of operation, is currently hosting a number of activities to celebrate the joyous occasion.
Advertisements