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Grofers plans under 10-min deliveries
The company is now putting its muscle behind the 10-minute delivery model and has started its focus with the top 12 cities on the platform.
Grofers, which became the latest Indian startup to attain unicorn status, plans to deliver groceries within 10 minutes through its so-called dark (online orders only) stores, co-founder and chief executive Albinder Dhindsa said.
The online grocer recently raised more than $120 million from food aggregator Zomato Ltd and existing investor Tiger Global Management. The fundraising round, which is still to be completed, may attract more investors wanting to tap into India’s fast-growing online grocery market, Dhindsa said.
SoftBank-backed Grofers is the 25th domestic startup to turn unicorn or achieve a valuation of more than $1 billion this year, underscoring a surge in overseas investors’ interest in Indian startups.
“As a company, we do not like to focus on valuations and investments. Rather our focus is to continue growing the company and put our efforts into the work we are doing,” he said.
He said the company had put plans for a public listing this year on the back burner as it is able to raise funds privately. “Well, plans changed considering the investor interest in our business and the grocery segment at large. If you look at the industry now, Grofers is the only top e-grocer that today can garner investments from private equity investors. We have parked our ambitions to list publicly for now,” Dhindsa said.
The company is now putting its muscle behind the 10-minute delivery model and has started its focus with the top 12 cities on the platform.
“Our journey to what is called express deliveries started last year where we began delivering groceries in 35-40 minutes to customers. And that is the only focus now for the company. This means that we will be taking our 10-minute grocery model to all cities we operate in eventually,” he said.
Grofers aims to eventually make all customer deliveries under 10-minutes across the 38 cities it currently operates in.
“The focus, for now, is the top 12 cities where we will be introducing this model and, over time, take it to the next 25 cities. Our aim is that all orders on Grofers should be delivered in under 10-minute eventually,” he added.
To execute this, Grofers is partnering with merchants on-ground and helping them set up dark stores, which will only be focused on online deliveries.
“Essentially following the ‘dark store’ model, the stores being onboarded this year are e-commerce first and focus entirely on online deliveries. Merchants are putting in their own investment to set up these stores, and Grofers will help finance some of these,” he said.
