Flipkart to expand grocery biz to take on Bigbasket, Amazon

BENGALURU: India’s largest online retailer Flipkart Pvt. Ltd plans to rapidly expand its recently launched grocery business, throwing down the gauntlet to entities such as online grocery market leader Bigbasket and arch-rival Amazon, as large online retailers look to bet big on a sector that is expected to rake in hundreds of crores of business in next few years.

Flipkart has launched its grocery offering called Flipkart Supermart in Bengaluru to start with and plans to expand it to four other major cities by the end of the year. The company’s foray into the grocery business comes a little over two years after the e-commerce giant shut down its grocery app Nearby, which failed to take off.

“Grocery is the largest retail category but it’s not a solved problem from an e-commerce perspective,” Flipkart grocery head Manish Kumar said. “We have done three main things to solve this. First, grocery is a highrepeat category so we will offer every-day discounts. Second, we have a strong proposition of delivering quality. We will display expiry dates on each product and guarantee fresh products to customers. Third, through preferred delivery slots for customers, we have tried to solve for convenience from a customer experience point of view,” he said.

As part of its re-entry into the grocery business, Flipkart will also sell staples and consumables under its own label, Flipkart Supermart Select. Flipkart is not launching a separate app for its grocery play, unlike arch-rival Amazon which sells consumer products through its Prime Now app. first reported in February 2017 that Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy was betting big on groceries.

Mint