Flipkart Grocery expands its service to 1,800 cities across the country

Move seen helping Walmart-owned Flipkart take on rivals Amazon, Reliance's JioMart and Tata-backed BigBasket to tap grocery market which is expected to be worth $850 bn by 2025

E-commerce firm Flipkart said it has massively ramped up its grocery operations to now service consumers in 1800 cities, including Ajmer, Amritsar, Bhuj, Bokaro, Daman and Diu, Dehradun and Kanyakumari. With this expansion, Flipkart is now present in 23 states across the country taking its reach to 10,000 pin codes.

The move is expected to help Walmart-owned  Flipkart take on rivals such as Amazon, Reliance’s JioMart, Tata-backed BigBasket and SoftBank-backed Swiggy to tap the grocery market which is expected to be worth $850 billion by 2025, according to the analysts.

Consumers will now have an option to purchase high-quality value-driven grocery products with a selection of more than 6000 in a safe and seamless manner. At the same time, the expansion will help support local farmers as they leverage the platform to become part of the digital economy. As the third wave of Covid-19 becomes imminent, customers across these cities will be able to get groceries safely delivered at the doorstep, without having to leave their homes.

“We are excited to expand our grocery operations to now service consumers almost all over India. The e-grocery market continues to see increased demand as consumers from tier 2 and 3 markets will get access to a high-quality selection of staples and household items from reputed brands at a great value,” said Smrithi Ravichandran, vice president, grocery, Flipkart. “We are committed to bringing this shopping experience to consumers all over the country, as we strengthen our selection, invest in FPOs and fresh produce, and scale up our supply chain.”

Flipkart has made deep investments in its grocery business for the last two years, and today caters to its pan-India customers through 22 grocery fulfilment centres. These centres are spread across 2.52 million sq ft in total, creating several direct and indirect job opportunities and boosting local employment.

During the recently concluded The Big Billion Days sale event, the grocery category saw customers from over 200 new cities and towns making purchases on Flipkart for the first time. Some of the top cities for Flipkart Grocery buyers were Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Mumbai, NCR, Patna, and Pune. Overall, the category saw a 2.3x growth in orders and revenue over last year.

According to the recently launched Flipkart-Bain report titled ‘How India Shops Online 2021’, grocery continues to see increased acceleration and will likely see this growth even post-pandemic. In order to bring the safest and high-quality Grocery products to its pan-India consumers ensures stringent quality control across its fulfilment centres and Grocery supply chain. Flipkart’s Grocery fulfilment centres have a fully digitized process, as well as product quality check and, have implemented an effective quality management system to ensure the products are traceable from raw materials until they reach the consumer.