‘Indian online grocery market can exceed $3 bn sales in 2020’

The Indian online grocer y market could exceed sales of USD 3 billion (about Rs 22,500 crore) in 2020, a substantial 76 per cent jump over the previous year, Spencer's Retail Chairman Sanjiv Goenka said.

The preference for online deliver y of products became more visible following the COVID-19 outbreak, he added.

Spencer's Retail, part of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka (RPSG) Group, had acquired online supermarket and grocer y store Nature's Basket in July 2019.

Consumers opted to buy essentials and other products from home in a bigger way than they had done in the past, he said.

"The result is that India's online grocer y market could exceed USD 3 billion in sales in 2020, a substantial 76 per cent increase over the previous year following a demand spike for the home deliver y of fresh produce," Goenka said in his address to shareholders in the company's Annual Report for 2019-20.

With increased access to smartphones and low data costs, shoppers now prefer an omni-channel shopping experience, he added. Spencers Retail is attractively positioned to capitalise on the omni-channel opportunity, he said.

"The company did not just respond to this sectoral inflexion point with a relevant mobile application and home deliver y; it invested in enhancing proximity to consumers through phone call-based deliver y, Chatbots and WhatsApp-driven product deliver y using its stores as hubs," Goenka said.