The availability of essential goods on online platforms improved to 57% during the two-day period that ended April 14, the highest it has been since the country went into lockdown to curb the spread of the Covid-19 virus, according to an ongoing survey by community platform LocalCircles.
Partnerships between online platforms and offline stores, along with an improvement in attendance of on-ground staff, led to online platforms being able to service a larger number of orders, executives and industry insiders told ET.
At the same time, there was no improvement in the availability of essential goods in offline stores, which stood at 64% for the latest two-day period, according to the survey done in partnership with the Department of Consumer Affairs.
Offline stores still have a long way to go to reach the availability level of 83% between March 22 and 23, or prior to the lockdown. For e-commerce platforms, availability of goods prior to the lockdown stood at 65%.
“It appears that the availability levels of essential goods via retail stores and ecommerce platforms is finally starting to converge,” LocalCircles said in its report. “The gap had become significant on March 23-24 when the ecommerce platforms suffered major stockouts.”
While availability levels of essential goods dipped between April 9 and 10, the trend seems to have stabilised and has actually improved in the case of e-commerce.
Apart from local disruptions to supply caused by demarcation of Red Zones by states and local authorities, industry watchers said supply of essentials will only incrementally improve in the days to come.
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