Flipkart owned online fashion retailer Myntra is working on its last-mile delivery system throughout the country by roping in kirana stores, mostly selling grocery in its “MENSA Network”. The network already has around 2000 shops signed up and are engaged in making the deliveries, reports Economic Times.

The average proportion of deliveries being done through this Mensa Network is around 20% and on specific occasions it goes up to as high as 34% even. The company aims at taking this to 70% over a period of time.

Myntra has come up with another idea to seal this route for successfully handling the last mile deliveries. The company is encouraging its existing delivery staff to setup their own little enterprises for which it will sanction Rs 40,000 each from its end. These self-employed delivery teams will then recruit the kirana stores in the respective territories and sort of manage them. Myntra calls this initiative Project Mass. The company claims some 370 of their delivery associates have already opted for Project Mass and 250 of them have already setup shops.

Giving off further statistics, these 250 shops are already handling around 40% of the deliveries to these locations in North India, while in the other zones, West, South and East these figures stand at 25%, 20% and 15% respectively.

Myntra had acquired Jabong last year and the two together have touched $1.5 billion in the month of September, in terms of the GMV (gross merchandise volume) and it is likely to increase by the end of the calendar year to $1.7 billion a month.  

This comes at a time when there are reports of Reliance Jio entering the ecommerce space by enabling consumers to use digital coupons to buy their daily needs and grocery and other consumer products from their neighbourhood ‘kirana’ shops. Jio plans to rope in some top consumer brands in this scheme. A pilot is already being run in Mumbai, Chennai and Ahmedabad.