Online food order delivery major Zomato could get into the grocery door delivery business exploiting an opportunity thrown up by the Coronavirus outbreak.
The situation with work from home becoming the norm with most private sector employees, the food orders have seen a decline, some claim by as much as 20%. Many employees would have ordered food from their offices while on work, which has now stopped. At the same time, the ordering of groceries has risen exponentially basically due to panic buying by people expecting a complete lockdown and for those products vanishing from the shelves.
Zomato has reportedly already worked out an arrangement with Grofers an online grocery delivery startup. Bigbasket, the largest player in the grocery and fresh foods segment may also join hands with Zomato, though talks are still going on as per this report.
This would be a major change in the policy Zomato has followed, since unlike its rival Swiggy, it had not planned to enter the grocery and other daily needs delivery business. Swiggy definitely has the plans and has been working on it.
The tie-up with Zomato may even give Swiggy a pilot run of sorts and prepare it to go alone when the time comes.
It might be a win-win idea for all players. Zomato already has a captive delivery staff who can be immediately deployed with due adjustments. For Grofers, it gets to generate more orders through Zomato.
Zomato will call it Zomato Market and the activity may even start very shortly, beginning with the Delhi NCR region, where Grofers has a strong foothold.
As for the modalities, the Grofers product list with prices will be accommodated within the Zomato app and customers can place their orders through the Zomato app.
Grofers has listed several mom & pop stores in its business and these will appear on the Zomato app as well.