Food and grocery retailers and e-grocers have started to utilise available manpower resources of other e-commerce ventures to augment their last-mile delivery, to tide over an acute shortage of workers. Some e-grocers have also agreed to pick and deliver orders from local kiranas and supermarkets to customers, three industry executives said.
Leading national and local supermarkets as well as e-grocers like Grofers and BigBasket are going to partner with food delivery apps Swiggy and Zomato, and other available resources of ecommerce firms in fashion and other segments which have currently shut down operations, the executives said.
Large apparel and electronics brick-and-mortar retailers have also offered their available manpower to food and grocery players, to help their in-store operations and home delivery backend, they said.
“Such sharing of manpower is the first such instance when the entire industry has come together forgetting rivalry to supply essentials to consumers with several migrant workers (who often provided the last-mile services) leaving the cities for their homes,” Retailers Association of India (RAI) chief executive Kumar Rajagopalan said.
Spencer’s Retail and Nature’s Basket managing director Devendra Chawla said new solutions to serve consumers were being tried, like tying-up with ecommerce and logistics startups for delivery when manpower was less. “The industry is also taking support of industry bodies like the CII, Ficci and RAI to create a new ecosystem and making store as a platform for pickup and delivery of essentials,” he said.
Reliance Retail is utilising available manpower at other formats of the group, while it has received also proposals from other retailers and ecommerce firms to work together and augment lastmile services. “These are tough times and any available resources will help,” CEO (grocery) Damodar Mall said.
Grofers CEO Albinder Dhindsa said the e-grocer had already started picking up and delivering orders from brick-and-mortar stores in Delhi and Lucknow. The company plans to expand this across the nation, he added. Grofers has also tied up with Swiggy and Zomato to utilise their delivery fleet , an industry executive said.
Swiggy, Zomato and BigBasket did not respond to queries from ET. The retailers’ association said around 25% of brick-and-mortar retail staff were coming over for work as of Saturday, even as demand for food and grocery had peaked with the country on a lockdown hampering the movement of essentials.
The body has created WhatsApp groups with retailers, ecommerce firms, manufacturers and local administration where one can help another and forge partnerships. Even HR heads are discussing on the finer details to make these partnerships work, said Rajagopalan.
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