Flipkart recently ventured into hyperlocal delivery, with Flipkart Quick in Bangalore and it is set to make the news. With Walmart at this helm, this time Flipkart won’t fail.
This time? Has this happened before?
Surprisingly, yes. Back in 2015, Flipkart launched Flipkart Nearby delivering your daily Kirana store items to the comfort of your homes, within 60 minutes, all in just one click.
Hyperlocal delivery has long been making news. But it is not a very new concept. When you ask your local grocery store to deliver milk and eggs regularly, it is Hyperlocal Delivery. Basically, it means acquiring and delivering products within very small geographies.
Basically what Dunzo does.
But in 2015, Flipkart Nearby closed due to a very small market and even smaller margins. What changed now?
First, people’s acceptance of the internet has increased. People are no longer extremely cautious of ordering things online. This comes along with an increased market penetration which will ensure a larger target market for Flipkart. Here Flipkart also holds the opportunity of capturing people who don’t generally order online but engage in Hyperlocal deliveries via local grocers. And once such a person starts ordering groceries with Flipkart Quick, they’ll slowly get entangled into the Flipkart ecosystem.
Secondly, with Dunzo having made its name in this domain, Flipkart might have lost out on the first opportunity to make its name but it has the second mover’s advantage of not creating awareness and simply building and using the existing channels established by Dunzo. Further Dunzo with its initial foray into the market has induced an acceptance for paying delivery fee for local orders on which Flipkart can easily capitalize. Additionally, as it’ll be one less app to download.
Thirdly, Flipkart Supermart has become a raging hit and is fast gaining traction. So, now with Flipkart giving the option to get perishables delivered, it will offer the customers a better service, thus slowly increasing its share in the Online Groceries segment. With Walmart backing Flipkart we have faith that Flipkart will surely bring out the big guns with this one.
Lastly, with the COVID scenario showing no signs of stopping anytime soon, it is a perfect time to build one’s name in the market and ride on the bandwagon of Hyperlocal deliveries. The competition will be tough with almost everyone in the market venturing into the delivery segment, but Flipkart knows that this is a temporary business parallel for the likes of Uber and Ola. While for Flipkart it could be a permanent source of revenue.
The new hyperlocal delivery service rebranded as Flipkart Quick currently services in some areas of Bangalore like Whitefield, Panathur, HSR Layout, BTM Layout, Banashankari, KR Puram and Indiranagar among others. The app will have two-hour slots to book deliveries with the delivery hours being 6 AM to midnight. Flipkart plans on expanding outside Banglore very soon and Sandeep Karwa, VP at Flipkart seemed extremely enthusiastic as he said -
“This is a great model for India as households of all sizes are already used to their neighbourhood Kirana stores. In fact, Indian families are so comfortable with what we call the ‘hyperlocal context’, that there is a tendency to develop deep, familial ties with vendors, shopkeepers and service providers – now with the convenience of e-commerce,”
(Source: Tech Crunch)
Let us see what does Flipkart have to offer this time and whether these testing times prove to work in their favour or not.
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