Sequoia Capital backed E-grocers, Grofers and PepperTap have requested their retail partners to take the lead and build dedicated warehouses that will make the process of sourcing products and delivering to customers more efficient.
In an earlier IOS interview, CEO Navneet Singh had remarked,
“The hurdles to achieving breakaway speed are vast. Poor quality of systems, getting proper data from the target retail stores, regulated MRP (maximum retail price) which limits margins, and technophobic delivery staff are among the challenges PepperTap faces, but we are gradually easing our way out with these challenges.”
Grofers and Peppertap are based on the express delivery service model. The customer-friendly app lets customers place orders, which are then processed by procuring these from the nearest kirana stores. Currently, they deliver within 90 minutes.
Grofers and PepperTap currently handle on average around 13,000 orders daily, which peaks tremendously over the weekend. The delay in servicing the customers in this on-demand industry is largely due to the time the delivery boys have to waste at the merchant partners premises. Picking and packing groceries and household goods from small shops can be tedious and time consuming.
Retail partners would own these warehouses, which would be separate from their physical outlets. Also called dark stores, they would have point-of-sale terminals for the delivery boys but not open to public.
Technology would take care of inventory sync between these warehouses and the e-grocer platforms to identify what is selling and what items would need more floor spaces.
Retail partners of Grofers in tier 1 cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru have already created around 23 exclusive warehouses. It is targeting a total of 50 such facilities by the end of this year. On the other hand, Peppertap has 10 exclusive warehouses in and around the capital.
While Grofers caters to 27 cities now (17 new cities in the last couple of months), Peppertap is increasing footprints to ten cities from the initial two.
Online grocers promising on-demand delivery have to consider the following to ensure customers are happy:
The addition of exclusive warehouses in their operations will probably help in keeping abreast with the pace of expansion and popularity of the bigger players.
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