Delivery for e-com firms comes to a grinding halt

The Indian e-commerce sector has come to a near standstill across the country, hurting the supply of essential commodities, amid lockdowns in several states and cities to prevent the spread of coronavirus, according to industry executives.

They said there is a lot of police action on the ground and even inter-state movement has been stopped, because of which deliveries of essential items via platforms, such as Flipkart, Amazon, Grofers, and Milkbasket, aren't happening. Fooddelivery firms — Swiggy and Zomato -are facing similar challenges, according to the sources.

"There are a lot of ambiguities. The authorities keep coming up with circulars which are contradictory to the previous ones," said an e-commerce industry executive. “It is more a miscommunication issue.”

E-commerce companies are facing challenges in delivering essential items such as rice, wheat, pulses, baby food, milk and dairy products, and fruits and vegetables. The other important items include hygiene products such as soaps, sanitary pads, sanitisers, and masks.

As most of the people are working from home, e-commerce industry insiders said that etailers are also finding it a challenge to deliver items like power banks, laptops, routers, headsets, and tables and chairs to their customers, despite a tremendous increase in demand.

Heeding the challenges, the government of Karnataka on Monday put out an order saying that e-commerce and home delivery come under essential services and shall be excluded from the restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the virus. Maharashtra, too, put out an order saying that e-commerce services providing essential goods, including pharmaceutical and medical equipment, should be excluded from the restrictions.

According to the sources, other than essentials, for which demand is huge, most e-commerce categories are witnessing at least a 60 per cent drop in sales.

Many consumers have reported on community platform Localcircles that deliveries from e-commerce grocery apps like Grofers, Bigbasket, Amazon, and Flipkart are not reaching them. About 79 per cent consumers (increased from 35 per cent) could not get most of the essential goods via e-commerce apps because of the lockdown, according to a survey by Localcircles, which received more than 16,000 responses from consumers. Also, about 32 per cent (increased from 17 per cent) consumers could not find most essentials in retail stores. “The state machinery must sensitise the police leadership so that officials on the ground do not create bottlenecks in the supply of essential goods to wholesale and retail stores, and homes of people,” said Localcircles. “The last thing we as a country want in this COVID-19 outbreak is long queues outside stores or scuffles for who gets to buy that last sugar packet in the store,” stated Localcircles, which is going to share its findings with the government.

Milkbasket, a Gurugram-based daily grocery delivery service, said the company’s staff, vendors, and vehicles are not being allowed to ply on the road by local police, disrupting its operations. “Yesterday, we had to cancel thousands of orders. We could only operate at 40 per cent capacity in Gurugram. Even lower in Noida. We might have to cancel all the orders today, impacting over 150,000 families across 4 cities,” the company had stated on Monday. “We are being told to shut down our distribution centres.”

The company urged the authorities to look into the matter and support the firm in ensuring smooth service.

Online grocery firm Grofers said according to the directive of the central government, the firm continued to provide essential goods to customers across the country on the day of Janata Curfew. However, because of some confusion over the exemption of the services, many of its delivery riders were stopped and arrested, leading to a delay in the delivery of almost 60,000 orders countrywide.

“This does not only affect the morale of the delivery staff who are working selflessly to support people, but also causes inconvenience to many customers,” said Albinder Dhindsa, co-founder and CEO of Grofers, which is backed by Softbank.