Online grocers BigBasket and Grofers may be working hard to deliver essentials, but a lack of delivery slots will remain for the next week or two as these e-tailers witness heavy demand from consumers following the ongoing 21-day nationwide lockdown due to the Covid-19 virus outbreak.
Both companies have seen demand for groceries rise by three to five times from a normal business day. And they are operating at 60-70% capacity due to manpower shortage and supply constraints. These two factors are leading to delivery slots getting filled quickly.
“There won’t be any more cancellations of orders, but don’t expect to get next-day delivery slots anytime soon,” said K Ganesh, one of the promoters of BigBasket. “It will take at least one to two weeks for things to get back to normal, only after which you can expect e-commerce players to quickly add capacity.”
Both BigBasket and Grofers had cancelled lakhs of orders in the past week, owing to an inability to service them as supply chains came to a standstill on March 23.
From operating at a little over 10% capacity, the companies have made a big recovery, although they have yet to reach peak capacity seen prior to the lockdown.
BigBasket, which serviced around 200,000 orders a day, was able to make just 23,000 deliveries on the worst day, even as new orders were flooding in.
Grofers, on the other hand, is seeing 1.2-1.3 million daily active users on its app despite no delivery slots.
“Dear customer, slots may not be available currently. We are working with cab aggregators, restaurant associations and other retailers to get help with our manpower requirements. We will keep you posted,” according to a notification on the BigBasket app late night on March 31.
Several BigBasket users reported their orders were delivered in cabs on Wednesday.
Grofers has tried to solve its manpower shortage in a slightly different way, though.
The company has begun giving on-ground staff their share of essential goods at the end of the day apart from regular pay, providing an added incentive to venture out for work.
“Currently, all our warehouses are operational with 60% warehouse staff and in order to meet the massive surge in demand, we are hiring an additional 2,000 temporary warehouse and delivery staff across the country,” Grofers said in a statement. “We are also actively collaborating with other platforms to get their staff and delivery fleet on board.”
Grofers is opening its app to new orders from Thursday, which will be fulfilled in 2-4 business days, it added.
These measures are working, albeit slowly. Neither of the companies is expected to begin operating at full capacity soon. Any kind of expansion to their capacities will only come after the lockdown is over, said multiple people with the knowledge of the workings of the two companies.
Still, there’s a significant opportunity for them to tap the massive influx of first-time users who try to use their services.
Just as payments apps did after the country banned high value currency notes in 2016, the real test of retaining users will come after the lockdown is over, according to Ganesh, who expects grocery services to bounce back far sooner than other e-commerce players.
“There’s no shortage of food in the country, warehouses are idle and so many people have lost their jobs or can’t go to work. These are all positives for e-commerce players and you’ll see them expanding their businesses very quickly after the lockdown ends,” Ganesh said.
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