Swiggy said it has expanded its grocery and household essential services to over 125 cities after collaborating with fast moving consumer goods brands including HUL, Procter & Gamble, Godrej, Dabur, Marico, Adani Wilmar and brick-and-mortar retailer Vishal Mega Mart.
The online food ordering app, which has partnered with supermarket chains, local retailers and drugmaker Cipla, said it will deliver essentials from neighbourhood stores and distribution centres of large brands.
“While the grocery and essentials category has always been a part of our long-term strategy of delivering hyperlocal convenience, we have enabled faster ramp up for the benefit of our consumers,” said Vivek Sunder, COO at Swiggy.”Over the next few weeks, we will continue to onboard more stores in these existing cities and expand to more cities wherever local authorities permit.” Swiggy’s grocery store partners on average have a select item list of 10-50 items per store which are deemed as essentials.
The announcement comes days after Zomato launched grocery delivery in more than 80 cities.
Direct partnerships with brands and retailers will help Swiggy with better visibility into inventory and in turn maintain better fill rates for orders, the Naspers-backed firm said.
Swiggy has also expanded its concierge service ‘Genie’ to over 15 cities. The service, however, is limited to delivering essentials including over-the-counter medicines during the lockdown period. The company said all these deliveries will be made by its dedicated fleet of delivery partners.
ET had last week reported that a slew of grocery delivery businesses including Swiggy Stores, DealShare, Dunzo as well as Flipkart, Big Basket and Grofers are aggressively looking to expand their reach by forging partnerships with brick-and-mortar stores to cater to the spike in demand of essential goods.
While for Swiggy, grocery has been a part of the core expansion strategy for over a year, its rival Zomato said it will treat this launch as a learning and may or may not continue grocery delivery in the near future. In the long term, however, both companies have grocery delivery on the cards.
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