Flipkart is headed to begin selling groceries from the second half of this year. The service is likely to be launched as an in-house offering rather than through an acquisition, will put the Bengaluru firm in direct competition with specialist portals such as Big-Basket, ZopNow and Local Baniya.
When it launches a grocery retail service, Flipkart will be following in the wake of rivals Amazon and Snapdeal, which have a head start in the segment. Amazon India during last week said that it is launching an express delivery platform in partnership with mom-and-pop stores, calling it Kirana Now. Experts are of the opinion that online grocery will become one of the top three most attractive segments for online retailers, after electronics and apparel.
- "In the next six months, we will see online vertical players, horizontal players as well as offline players coming online to sell groceries," he predicted. The India Brand Equity Foundation estimates that food and grocery accounted for 69% of India's $490-billion (Rs 300-lakh crore) retail sector in 2013, followed by apparel at 8%.
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Entering new catogeries
According to people familiar with Flipkart's expansion plans, the addition of groceries on its portal is part of a larger strategy to include newer categories and business lines that will help boost revenue and chalk up profits. All these moves are seen as a runup to an eventual public listing of the shares of the Bengaluru company within the next two years. "We will try and launch as many categories as possible and FMCG will be one of those categories," said Ankit Nagori, Senior Vice President in-charge of Flipkart's commerce platform. Other categories of interest would be home furnishing and furniture, he said.
- The entry of Flipkart and Amazon into this space will only validate the attractiveness of online grocery retail, according to investors."Groceries is a natural category for anyone to lust after, but the supply chain for groceries is very complex and has to be built city by city" said Sanjeev Aggarwal which has bagged big basket
Author : Syed Amer Uddin
Designation: Associate Blogger
Bio: A computer science engineer with keen interest for learning new ideas enabled him to acquire significant knowledge on various aspects of technology and Computer programming languages. He has always been fascinated by research, especially work that benefits common people or the environment.
Bio: A computer science engineer with keen interest for learning new ideas enabled him to acquire significant knowledge on various aspects of technology and Computer programming languages. He has always been fascinated by research, especially work that benefits common people or the environment.
